After declaring "Code Red" in December 2025, OpenAI rushed out GPT-5.2 with promises of a "smarter and more useful" experience. The marketing copy describes it as an upgrade that's "enjoyable to talk to" - a pointed response to complaints that ChatGPT had become a soulless answer machine.
We put GPT-5.2 through extensive testing across the categories users complain about most. Here's what we found.
OVERALL VERDICT
Marginal improvement. Core problems persist.
Test Results: Category by Category
| Issue | GPT-5.0 | GPT-5.2 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory/Context Retention | Broken | Slightly Better | Partial Fix |
| Lazy Responses | Severe | Still Present | Not Fixed |
| Over-Censorship | Extreme | Still Extreme | Not Fixed |
| Code Generation Quality | Degraded | Improved | Fixed |
| Response Speed | Slow | Faster | Fixed |
| Personality/Engagement | Lobotomized | Still Flat | Not Fixed |
| Complex Reasoning | Degraded | Slightly Better | Partial Fix |
What GPT-5.2 Gets Right
Code Generation (Improved)
GPT-5.2 handles programming tasks noticeably better than 5.0. It's less likely to give you incomplete code blocks or refuse to write "potentially dangerous" functions like basic file I/O. Still not as good as GPT-4 was in its prime, but the improvement is measurable.
Response Speed (Improved)
Latency is down. Responses come faster, especially for shorter queries. OpenAI clearly optimized the inference pipeline. This is the most noticeable improvement for casual users.
Credit where due: OpenAI's engineering team clearly worked overtime during the Code Red period. The infrastructure improvements are real, even if they don't fix the deeper problems.
What GPT-5.2 Still Gets Wrong
The "Lazy" Problem (Not Fixed)
Ask GPT-5.2 to write something comprehensive, and you'll still get truncated outputs with "...and so on" or "you can continue from here." It refuses to engage deeply with complex requests, preferring to give surface-level answers and suggest you "break this into smaller tasks."
Over-Censorship (Worse)
If anything, the safety guardrails have gotten tighter. GPT-5.2 refuses more edge cases than 5.0. Creative writing requests get blocked. Hypothetical scenarios trigger warnings. The model second-guesses itself constantly, adding disclaimers to responses that don't need them.
Personality and Engagement (Not Fixed)
Remember when ChatGPT felt like talking to someone clever and curious? GPT-5.2 feels like talking to a customer service bot that's been trained to never say anything interesting. The "enjoyable to talk to" marketing is a lie.
"It's like they fixed the plumbing but forgot the house is on fire." - Reddit user describing GPT-5.2
The Memory Problem: Slightly Better, Still Bad
One of the biggest GPT-5 complaints was broken memory. The model would forget context mid-conversation, contradict itself, or lose track of what you were working on together.
GPT-5.2 shows improvement here - but only marginal. In our tests:
- Short conversations (under 10 exchanges): Memory worked correctly ~85% of the time
- Medium conversations (10-30 exchanges): Memory failed ~40% of the time
- Long conversations (30+ exchanges): Memory was essentially random
This is better than GPT-5.0, where memory failures started almost immediately. But it's nowhere near the reliability users expect from a $20/month subscription.
How GPT-5.2 Compares to Competitors
The real test isn't whether GPT-5.2 is better than GPT-5.0 - it's whether it can compete with alternatives:
| Model | Reasoning | Speed | Creativity | Censorship |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.2 | Good | Good | Poor | Heavy |
| Gemini 3 | Excellent | Excellent | Good | Moderate |
| Claude 3.5 | Excellent | Good | Excellent | Light |
| Llama 3.1 (405B) | Good | Variable | Good | Minimal |
GPT-5.2 is competitive on reasoning and speed, but it loses badly on creativity and gets crushed on censorship. For users who want an AI that actually engages with their requests, Claude and Gemini are simply better products right now.
The uncomfortable truth: OpenAI's safety-first approach has made ChatGPT less useful than its competitors. Users are leaving not because they want dangerous AI, but because they want AI that actually does what they ask.
Should You Stay with ChatGPT Plus?
If you're already paying $20/month for ChatGPT Plus, GPT-5.2 gives you:
- Faster responses - noticeable improvement
- Better code - if you're a developer, this matters
- Slightly better memory - still not reliable, but less broken
- Same censorship issues - if these bothered you before, they still will
- Same personality problems - the magic is still gone
Our recommendation: Give it another month. If GPT-5.3 or 5.4 don't address the creativity and censorship issues, it's time to look at alternatives. Claude offers a free tier that's genuinely competitive, and Gemini Advanced is the same price as ChatGPT Plus with fewer restrictions.
The Bottom Line
GPT-5.2 is a band-aid on a bullet wound. OpenAI fixed the symptoms that were easiest to measure - speed, code quality, basic memory - while ignoring the deeper problems that made users fall in love with ChatGPT in the first place.
The model is faster. It writes slightly better code. But it's still not the curious, engaging, creative assistant that GPT-4 was. Until OpenAI addresses the over-safety problem that's strangling their product, ChatGPT will continue losing ground to competitors who trust their users more.
Final score: 5/10. Better than the disaster of GPT-5.0, but still a shadow of what ChatGPT used to be.
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