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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Amanda Caswell

OpenAI’s leaked GPT-5.1 ‘Thinking’ model could outsmart Gemini 3 Pro — here’s why that matters

OpenAI logo.

I’ve been waiting for Gemini 3.0 to roll out like a kid waiting for Christmas day. At the same time, OpenAI is quietly preparing another major AI upgrade and it could arrive just in time to steal the thunder from Google’s upcoming Gemini 3 Pro. Which one will officially launch first is anyone’s guess.

Traces of a mysterious new model called GPT-5.1 Thinking have surfaced in ChatGPT’s backend, hinting that OpenAI is getting ready to launch a version of its flagship model optimized for deeper, more deliberate reasoning. That’s a big deal, and it may be a direct response to Google’s plans to release Gemini 3 Pro, which promises multimodal smarts and long-context memory — whenever it officially rolls out. I reached out to Google this week, but the company's lips are sealed.

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