In attempting to keep up with (or ahead of) the competition, model releases proceed at a steady clip: GPT-5.2 represents OpenAI’s third major model release since August. GPT-5 launched that month with a new routing system that toggles between instant-response and simulated reasoning modes, though users complained about responses that felt cold and clinical. November’s… Read More »
An AI-generated version of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seen in a still capture from a video generated by Sora 2. Credit: OpenAI Under the new agreement with Disney, Sora users will be able to generate short videos using characters such as Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Iron Man, Simba, and characters from franchises including Frozen, Inside… Read More »
In addition to buzz about Gemini on social media, Google is quickly catching up to ChatGPT in user numbers. ChatGPT has more than 800 million weekly users, according to OpenAI, while Google’s Gemini app has grown from 450 million monthly active users in July to 650 million in October, according to Business Insider. Financial stakes… Read More »
On Tuesday, Microsoft and Nvidia announced plans to invest in Anthropic under a new partnership that includes a $30 billion commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services. Nvidia will commit up to $10 billion to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5 billion, with both companies investing in Anthropic’s next funding round. The… Read More »
When Altman celebrates finally getting GPT to avoid em dashes, he’s really celebrating that OpenAI has tuned the latest version of GPT-5.1 (probably through reinforcement learning or fine-tuning) to weight custom instructions more heavily in its probability calculations. There’s an irony about control here: Given the probabilistic nature of the issue, there’s no guarantee the… Read More »
On Wednesday, OpenAI released GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking, two updated versions of its flagship AI models now available in ChatGPT. The company is wrapping the models in the language of anthropomorphism, claiming that they’re warmer, more conversational, and better at following instructions. The release follows complaints earlier this year that its previous models were… Read More »
On Monday, OpenAI announced it has signed a seven-year, $38 billion deal to buy cloud services from Amazon Web Services to power products like ChatGPT and Sora. It’s the company’s first big computing deal after a fundamental restructuring last week that gave OpenAI more operational and financial freedom from Microsoft. The agreement gives OpenAI access… Read More »
An OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters that “an IPO is not our focus, so we could not possibly have set a date,” adding that the company is “building a durable business and advancing our mission so everyone benefits from AGI.” Revenue grows as losses mount The IPO preparations follow a restructuring of OpenAI completed on October… Read More »
Lawsuits and safety concerns Character.AI was founded in 2021 by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, two former Google engineers, and raised nearly $200 million from investors. Last year, Google agreed to pay about $3 billion to license Character.AI’s technology, and Shazeer and De Freitas returned to Google. But the company now faces multiple lawsuits… Read More »
Earlier this month, the company unveiled a wellness council to address these concerns, though critics noted the council did not include a suicide prevention expert. OpenAI also recently rolled out controls for parents of children who use ChatGPT. The company says it’s building an age prediction system to automatically detect children using ChatGPT and impose… Read More »