OpenAI, which issued a code red in response to Google's fierce pursuit led by Gemini, is believed to have moved up the release of a new version of ChatGPT.
According to The Verge, a U.S. information technology (IT) outlet, on the 6th local time, OpenAI has moved up the release date of GPT-5.2—originally slated for later this month—to the 9th.
However, the outlet added that the exact release date could shift slightly due to issues such as development progress or server capacity.
OpenAI's move comes as Gemini 3 Pro is expanding its user base on the back of high performance and image generation and editing features such as "Nanobanana Pro."
By contrast, while ChatGPT's user base still dwarfs rival models, it has started to decline.
Similarweb's tally shows that ChatGPT's share of generative AI traffic, which was 87% a year ago, fell to 71.3% in early December, while Gemini's share roughly tripled over the same period from 5.7% to 15.1%.
OpenAI is seen as aiming to prevent that trend from hardening by releasing the new version early.
Gemini 3 Pro, unveiled on Nov. 18, immediately took the top spot on the user-rated "LM Arena leaderboard."
It also posted 38.3% on the doctoral-level reasoning benchmark "HLE (Humanity's Last Exam)," which positions itself as the last bastion of human intelligence, beating GPT-5, which scored 25.3%, by a wide margin.
In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a code red internally, telling staff to set aside other work and focus on improving the ChatGPT model.
In a memo shared internally, Altman also stressed that the soon-to-be-released new reasoning model is outpacing Gemini 3 Pro in internal evaluations.
Mark Chen, OpenAI chief research officer (CRO), also recently told some colleagues that the company is preparing a counterattack with a new large language model (LLM) codenamed "Garlic," The Information, an IT-focused outlet, reported, citing sources.
However, OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the change to the update schedule.