GPT-5 hits a speed bump - Falling short of expectations.

A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that OpenAI's ambitious GPT-5 project, codenamed "Orion," is facing significant delays and challenges, raising questions about its return on investment.

The report aligns with earlier insights from The Information, which suggested that GPT-5 might not bring the revolutionary leap we’ve seen with previous iterations. According to the WSJ, the model’s 18-month development journey has been marked by extended training cycles and escalating costs.

OpenAI recently completed two major training runs for GPT-5, leveraging vast amounts of data. However, delays in the first phase signaled a costly and time-intensive road ahead. While GPT-5 reportedly outperforms its predecessors, the incremental improvement hasn’t yet justified the steep investment.

To address data limitations, OpenAI is innovating by hiring experts to generate new data through coding and mathematical problem-solving, supplementing public and licensed datasets. They're also leaning on synthetic data produced by another model, dubbed "o1."

OpenAI has yet to comment publicly on the report. Earlier, the company confirmed that "Orion" wouldn’t debut this year.

As the AI industry watches closely, GPT-5's journey underscores both the promise and complexity of pushing the boundaries of generative AI. Only time will tell the fate of this GPT-5 roadmap now.