OpenAI’s powerful new ChatGPT-5.6 is ready for you

Originally announced on June 26 And with an interesting release on Wednesday, the latest and greatest in the ChatGPT model family has arrived.

ChatGPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna are available starting today in the ChatGPT, Codex, and OpenAI API, OpenAI said. In a blog post. The model family is currently rolling out globally and should be available to all users “within the next 24 hours.”

OpenAI has been at the forefront of the AI ​​movement since launching ChatGPT nearly four years ago, and has maintained its leadership in terms of total users, despite increasing competition from competitors like Google and Anthropic.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Sol is the new flagship model and is designed to handle complex thinking, comprehensive technical implementation and design. OpenAI calls it the company’s best programming model yet, scoring better than Anthropic’s model Myth model 5 In index factor coding synthetic analysis. Benchmarks show that it is also more efficient across token output, time, and cost.

Terra, a middle-of-the-road model, is intended for everyday workflows and may be the perfect choice for most people. Luna prioritizes cost efficiency and speed.

ChatGPT-5.6 is now better in design and can inspect the displayed result to detect visual issues, OpenAI said. It also described 5.6 as the most powerful cybersecurity model to date, achieving high performance with fewer codes.

The cybersecurity capabilities of the latest frontier models — GPT-5.6, Anthropic’s Mythos 5, and Fable 5 — are why companies have been slow to make them available to the general public. In Anthropic’s case, the company first made a version available only to specific users for cybersecurity purposes. When a version was released to the public, the Trump administration ordered the company to prevent any foreign nationals from using it, effectively banning it while the government reviews its capabilities and takes safety precautions. Likewise, GPT-5.6 was first released for cybersecurity and technology professionals, in a rolling release Requested by government officials.

ChatGPT work

ChatGPT-5.6 Models wasn’t the only announcement OpenAI made on Thursday, as it also launched ChatGPT Work. It is described as an agent that lives inside ChatGPT and can take actions inside your applications and files.

ChatGPT Work is powered by the new 5.6 models, giving it powerful reasoning skills and allowing it to collect information across your applications, create a plan, and execute it with little to no interaction on your part. You can also keep the agent running on scheduled tasks while you are away from your computer.