AI in 2025: Is OpenAI Losing Ground to Competitors?

Following the discovery phase of 2023 and the industrialization stage in 2024, 2025 marked a maturity stage in AI usage. The innovation race continued unabated but shifted towards deeper and more structural evolutions. Let’s review the major AI advancements that marked the year 2025.

Reasoning and Memory: The Deep Dive

In 2025, major publishers maintained a fast pace in releasing new and more powerful models. OpenAI launched GPT-5 in August and has now moved on to version 5.2, Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.5, while Google introduced Gemini 3. Despite their differences, these models share several converging developments.

• Native Step-by-Step Reasoning: Sam Altman announced in February: GPT-4.5 is the last model from OpenAI without a chain-of-thought. From GPT-5 onward, this reasoning is activated by default. Through the API, developers can adjust the “thinking budget” to balance between cost and quality. Meanwhile, Claude incorporated extended thinking in February 2025.
• Massive Memory: Claude reaches 1 million tokens, GPT-5.2 goes up to 400,000, and Gemini 3 displays comparable contexts. The models can now analyze entire codebases or dozens of documents in a single query.
• Optimized Speed: GPT-5.2 claims a 45% reduction in hallucinations while improving latency thanks to a smart router. Claude and Gemini follow a similar logic, automatically adjusting reasoning time based on the complexity of the request.

However, while reduced, hallucinations still persist. Additionally, the reception of these models has not always been positive. GPT-5, highly anticipated in August, notably divided the community. Some users found the model more “cold” and less conversational than GPT-4o, leading OpenAI to restore access to the previous model.

Moreover, the race for overpowering AI was challenged early in 2025 with the emergence of a new player: the Chinese DeepSeek. Unlike established major publishers (OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, Anthropic, Microsoft) who continued to escalate model sizes and training costs, DeepSeek favored an approach focused on efficiency and resource management.

Code: AI Becomes a Credible Developer

In 2025, Claude established itself as a leader in AI-driven coding: refactoring code across multiple files, debugging in production, managing entire codebases… A sign of this ascendancy: GitHub Copilot switched to Claude by default.

The nature of the work performed by AI also represents a significant leap forward. Code-specialized assistants (Claude Code, Mistral Vibe CLI, Google Antigravity) no longer just generate isolated snippets of code. They can now orchestrate coherent changes across multiple files, understand the overall project architecture, detect errors, and correct them autonomously. Consequently, the developer becomes a supervisor of agents. This trend could foreshadow a lowering of technical skills among future coding professionals.

On a more experimental note, 2025 popularized “vibe coding”, which involves giving natural language instructions to AI rather than writing code. Tools like Cursor, Lovable, or Google’s Opal embody this approach, enabling anyone to create prototypes without technical expertise.

Photo and Video: Significant Progress

A New Milestone Achieved by Nano Banana Pro?

The year 2025 marked a maturation phase in the AI visual market. In image generation, OpenAI phased out DALL·E in favor of a new generator integrated into ChatGPT, which offers superior quality and better user integration. Midjourney responded just a week later by launching its V7. However, the platform, once at the forefront in 2023, seems to have now lost its leadership, as it continues to fall in specialized rankings.

Late in the year, Google made a significant impact. With Nano Banana Pro, the American giant unveiled an image model based on Gemini 3, capable of generating visuals in 2K and 4K with advanced creative control. Mid-December, ChatGPT countered with GPT Image 1.5, an improved version of its generator. It remains to be seen if the response will convince users.

In the realm of image retouching, Adobe confirmed its shift begun in 2023. The publisher strengthened its position with Firefly Image Model 5, while deploying several features oriented towards production. Generative Upscale now allows for the enhancement of degraded image resolution up to 8 megapixels. The Harmonize tool facilitates the integration of generated elements by automatically adjusting light and colors to ensure visual consistency. Finally, Firefly Creative Production automates the mass processing of thousands of visuals.

Video Generators Settle In

This year, AI-driven video generation finally moved from being just a tantalizing possibility to a concrete reality. Sora, available in France since February, allowed users to realistically test the technology but also revealed gaps: difficulties with dynamic sequences, poorly understood styles, and a sense of floating. Sora 2, launched in October, marked an improvement with better accuracy, audio generation, and video cameos. Google responded immediately with Veo 3.1, its improved video model, and Flow, its associated creation platform. Meanwhile, Runway Gen-4 and Adobe Firefly have enriched the market with powerful tools that offer better creative control and seamless integration into existing creation workflows.

To promote content, Sora and Meta have adopted the same formula: streamlined social interfaces inspired by TikTok, with personalized feeds and the ability to remix other users’ creations. However, the relevance of such a proposition remains questionable, particularly in a context where the authenticity of content is increasingly difficult to assess.

Towards Agentive AI?

Agentive AI emerged as a priority for publishers in 2025, with OpenAI leading the way. The firm aims to offer an AI capable of autonomously performing complex tasks. This goal was partially realized with the introduction of Operator, quickly replaced by Agent ChatGPT. This upgrade transforms ChatGPT from a simple conversational assistant to a software agent capable of planning, deciding, and executing end-to-end actions on behalf of the user, across the PC.

Anthropic, having already explored this territory in 2024, followed suit with Claude for Chrome, launched in August as a browser extension. The tool allows Claude to directly act on tabs to book flights, draft emails, or manage a calendar. Meanwhile, Google unveiled in October Gemini 2.5 Computer Use, which also focuses on the browser and appears to have taken a lead over the competition.

While agentive AI has moved beyond the conceptual phase, it has not yet reached operational maturity. Human supervision remains essential, and AIs still struggle to break free from highly structured scenarios. Achieving this level of maturity is one of the major projects expected for 2026.

AI Already Transforming Online Search

If you work in the SEO world, you’re probably obsessed with generative AI. Indeed, Google Search remains overwhelmingly dominant (it accounts for about 93% of the online search market compared to 0.25% for ChatGPT), but a transition seems to have taken place: more conversational searches, a drop in click-through rate, dilution of informational traffic… And the hardest part is yet to come: at the dawn of 2026, AI Overviews, whose arrival has been rumored to be imminent for over two years, is still not available in France. This hasn’t stopped professionals from preparing. In the near future, SEO is moving towards more global visibility, with an increasing emphasis on branding, automation of technical tasks, and more strategic missions for SEO professionals.

In terms of online search, 2025 also saw the arrival of AI browsers. Comet first, unveiled by Perplexity during the summer, then ChatGPT Atlas launched in October. In this setup, the browser is no longer just a point of access to the web, but an execution layer driven by agents capable of reading, deciding, and acting on behalf of the user. An evolution that accelerates the end of a web browsed page by page.

And what about e-commerce? Naturally, the major AI players were not going to miss out on a field where the intent is strong and the prospects for immediate monetization are high. In 2025, ChatGPT integrated shopping features with product displays, comparisons, direct purchase links, and then a dedicated assistant capable of refining needs and offering comparative tables, unveiled just days before Black Friday. Perplexity followed with a conversational shopping assistant, including personalized recommendations and integrated payment via PayPal, without redirection to merchant sites.

Is OpenAI Losing Its Leading Edge?

In 2025, OpenAI’s technological lead has significantly narrowed. While the company remains the most visible and adopted player (by a wide margin), it is no longer consistently ahead on all key indicators. Google has taken the lead in image generation and is making rapid progress in multimodal reasoning with Gemini, while Anthropic has established itself as the reference in advanced coding, becoming the default choice for many professionals. OpenAI thus dominates more by its versatility and ecosystem than by its technical superiority.

The “red code”, triggered at the end of the year by OpenAI, is indicative of this shift in dynamics. By abruptly refocusing its priorities on ChatGPT in the face of more pressing competition, OpenAI has implicitly acknowledged that its position is no longer guaranteed.