Meanwhile, actual Ghibli creation Princess Mononoke is enjoying robust returns from its current big-screen revival.
This week, OpenAI launched a new image generator in ChatGPT, which quickly went viral for its ability to create Studio Ghibli-style images. Beyond the pastel illustrations, GPT-4o’s native image generator significantly upgrades ChatGPT’s capabilities, improving picture editing, text rendering, and spatial representation.
However, one of the most notable changes OpenAI made this week involves its content moderation policies, which now allow ChatGPT to, upon request, generate images depicting public figures, hateful symbols, and racial features.
OpenAI previously rejected these types of prompts for being too controversial or harmful. But now, the company has “evolved” its approach, according to a blog post published Thursday by OpenAI’s model behavior lead, Joanne Jang.
“We’re shifting from blanket refusals in sensitive areas to a more precise approach focused on preventing real-world harm,” said Jang. “The goal is to embrace humility: recognizing how much we don’t know, and positioning ourselves to adapt as we learn.”
These adjustments seem to be part of OpenAI’s larger plan to effectively “uncensor” ChatGPT. OpenAI announced in February that it’s starting to change how it trains AI models, with the ultimate goal of letting ChatGPT handle more requests, offer diverse perspectives, and reduce topics the chatbot refuses to work with.
Under the updated policy, ChatGPT can now generate and modify images of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other public figures that OpenAI did not previously allow. Jang says OpenAI doesn’t want to be the arbiter of status, choosing who should and shouldn’t be allowed to be generated by ChatGPT. Instead, the company is giving users an opt-out option if they don’t want ChatGPT depicting them.
In a white paper released Tuesday, OpenAI also said it will allow ChatGPT users to “generate hateful symbols,” such as swastikas, in educational or neutral contexts, as long as they don’t “clearly praise or endorse extremist agendas.”
Moreover, OpenAI is changing how it defines “offensive” content. Jang says ChatGPT used to refuse requests around physical characteristics, such as “make this person’s eyes look more Asian” or “make this person heavier.” In TechCrunch’s testing, we found ChatGPT’s new image generator fulfills these types of requests.
Additionally, ChatGPT can now mimic the styles of creative studios — such as Pixar or Studio Ghibli — but still restricts imitating individual living artists’ styles. As TechCrunch previously noted, this could rehash an existing debate around the fair use of copyrighted works in AI training datasets.
It’s worth noting that OpenAI is not completely opening the floodgates to misuse. GPT-4o’s native image generator still refuses a lot of sensitive queries, and in fact, it has more safeguards around generating images of children than DALL-E 3, ChatGPT’s previous AI image generator, according to GPT-4o’s white paper.
But OpenAI is relaxing its guardrails in other areas after years of conservative complaints around alleged AI “censorship” from Silicon Valley companies. Google previously faced backlash for Gemini’s AI image generator, which created multiracial images for queries such as “U.S. founding fathers” and “German soldiers in WWII,” which were obviously inaccurate.
Now, the culture war around AI content moderation may be coming to a head. Earlier this month, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan sent questions to OpenAI, Google, and other tech giants about potential collusion with the Biden administration to censor AI-generated content.
In a previous statement to TechCrunch, OpenAI rejected the idea that its content moderation changes were politically motivated. Rather, the company says the shift reflects a “long-held belief in giving users more control,” and OpenAI’s technology is just now getting good enough to navigate sensitive subjects.
Regardless of its motivation, it’s certainly a good time for OpenAI to be changing its content moderation policies, given the potential for regulatory scrutiny under the Trump administration. Silicon Valley giants like Meta and X have also adopted similar policies, allowing more controversial topics on their platforms.
While OpenAI’s new image generator has only created some viral Studio Ghibli memes so far, it’s unclear what the broader effects of these policies will be. ChatGPT’s recent changes may go over well with the Trump administration, but letting an AI chatbot answer sensitive questions could land OpenAI in hot water soon enough.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Open AI’s latest update to ChatGPT ignores any prior restraint and jumps headfirst into aping the actual talents of Studio Ghibli.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users.
2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora.
OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati. OpenAI has also been hit with lawsuits from Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers alleging copyright infringement, as well as an injunction from Elon Musk to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit.
In 2025, OpenAI is battling the perception that it’s ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. The company has been trying to shore up its relationship with Washington as it simultaneously pursues an ambitious data center project, and as it reportedly lays the groundwork for one of the largest funding rounds in history.
Below, you’ll find a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we’ve been updating throughout the year. If you have any other questions, check out our ChatGPT FAQ here.
OpenAI on Tuesday rolled out a major upgrade to ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities: ChatGPT can now use the GPT-4o model to generate and edit images and photos directly. The feature went live earlier this week in ChatGPT and Sora, OpenAI’s AI video-generation tool, for subscribers of the company’s Pro plan, priced at $200 a month, and will be available soon to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and developers using the company’s API service. The company’s CEO Sam Altman said on Wednesday, however, that the release of the image generation feature to free users would be delayed due to higher demand than the company expected.
Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, will lead the company’s global expansion and manage corporate partnerships as CEO Sam Altman shifts his focus to research and products, according to a blog post from OpenAI. Lightcap, who previously worked with Altman at Y Combinator, joined the Microsoft-backed startup in 2018. OpenAI also said Mark Chen would step into the expanded role of chief research officer, and Julia Villagra will take on the role of chief people officer.
OpenAI has updated its AI voice assistant with improved chatting capabilities, according to a video posted on Monday (March 24) to the company’s official media channels. The update enables real-time conversations, and the AI assistant is said to be more personable and interrupts users less often. Users on ChatGPT’s free tier can now access the new version of Advanced Voice Mode, while paying users will receive answers that are “more direct, engaging, concise, specific, and creative,” a spokesperson from OpenAI told TechCrunch.
OpenAI and Meta have separately engaged in discussions with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries regarding potential collaborations to enhance their AI services in the country, per a report by The Information. One key topic being discussed is Reliance Jio distributing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Reliance has proposed selling OpenAI’s models to businesses in India through an application programming interface (API) so they can incorporate AI into their operations. Meta also plans to bolster its presence in India by constructing a large 3GW data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat. OpenAI, Meta, and Reliance have not yet officially announced these plans.
Noyb, a privacy rights advocacy group, is supporting an individual in Norway who was shocked to discover that ChatGPT was providing false information about him, stating that he had been found guilty of killing two of his children and trying to harm the third. “The GDPR is clear. Personal data has to be accurate,” said Joakim Söderberg, data protection lawyer at Noyb, in a statement. “If it’s not, users have the right to have it changed to reflect the truth. Showing ChatGPT users a tiny disclaimer that the chatbot can make mistakes clearly isn’t enough. You can’t just spread false information and in the end add a small disclaimer saying that everything you said may just not be true.”
OpenAI has added new transcription and voice-generating AI models to its APIs: a text-to-speech model, “gpt-4o-mini-tts,” that delivers more nuanced and realistic sounding speech, as well as two speech-to-text models called “gpt-4o-transcribe” and “gpt-4o-mini-transcribe”. The company claims they are improved versions of what was already there and that they hallucinate less.
OpenAI has introduced o1-pro in its developer API. OpenAI says its o1-pro uses more computing than its o1 “reasoning” AI model to deliver “consistently better responses.” It’s only accessible to select developers who have spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services. OpenAI charges $150 for every million tokens (about 750,000 words) input into the model and $600 for every million tokens the model produces. It costs twice as much as OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 for input and 10 times the price of regular o1.
Noam Brown, who heads AI reasoning research at OpenAI, thinks that certain types of AI models for “reasoning” could have been developed 20 years ago if researchers had understood the correct approach and algorithms.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, in a post on X, that the company has trained a “new model” that’s “really good” at creative writing. He posted a lengthy sample from the model given the prompt “Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.” OpenAI has not extensively explored the use of AI for writing fiction. The company has mostly concentrated on challenges in rigid, predictable areas such as math and programming. And it turns out that it might not be that great at creative writing at all.
we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.
PROMPT:
Please write a metafictional literary short story…
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 11, 2025
OpenAI rolled out new tools designed to help developers and businesses build AI agents — automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks — using the company’s own AI models and frameworks. The tools are part of OpenAI’s new Responses API, which enables enterprises to develop customized AI agents that can perform web searches, scan through company files, and navigate websites, similar to OpenAI’s Operator product. The Responses API effectively replaces OpenAI’s Assistants API, which the company plans to discontinue in the first half of 2026.
OpenAI intends to release several “agent” products tailored for different applications, including sorting and ranking sales leads and software engineering, according to a report from The Information. One, a “high-income knowledge worker” agent, will reportedly be priced at $2,000 a month. Another, a software developer agent, is said to cost $10,000 a month. The most expensive rumored agents, which are said to be aimed at supporting “PhD-level research,” are expected to cost $20,000 per month. The jaw-dropping figure is indicative of how much cash OpenAI needs right now: The company lost roughly $5 billion last year after paying for costs related to running its services and other expenses. It’s unclear when these agentic tools might launch or which customers will be eligible to buy them.
The latest version of the macOS ChatGPT app allows users to edit code directly in supported developer tools, including Xcode, VS Code, and JetBrains. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers can use the feature now, and the company plans to roll it out to more users like Enterprise, Edu, and free users.
According to a new report from VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, experienced solid growth in the second half of 2024. It took ChatGPT nine months to increase its weekly active users from 100 million in November 2023 to 200 million in August 2024, but it only took less than six months to double that number once more, according to the report. ChatGPT’s weekly active users increased to 300 million by December 2024 and 400 million by February 2025. ChatGPT has experienced significant growth recently due to the launch of new models and features, such as GPT-4o, with multimodal capabilities. ChatGPT usage spiked from April to May 2024, shortly after that model’s launch.
OpenAI has effectively canceled the release of o3 in favor of what CEO Sam Altman is calling a “simplified” product offering. In a post on X, Altman said that, in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that “integrates a lot of [OpenAI’s] technology,” including o3, in ChatGPT and its API. As a result of that roadmap decision, OpenAI no longer plans to release o3 as a standalone model.
A commonly cited stat is that ChatGPT requires around 3 watt-hours of power to answer a single question. Using OpenAI’s latest default model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, as a reference, nonprofit AI research institute Epoch AI found the average ChatGPT query consumes around 0.3 watt-hours. However, the analysis doesn’t consider the additional energy costs incurred by ChatGPT with features like image generation or input processing.
In response to pressure from rivals like DeepSeek, OpenAI is changing the way its o3-mini model communicates its step-by-step “thought” process. ChatGPT users will see an updated “chain of thought” that shows more of the model’s “reasoning” steps and how it arrived at answers to questions.
OpenAI is now allowing anyone to use ChatGPT web search without having to log in. While OpenAI had previously allowed users to ask ChatGPT questions without signing in, responses were restricted to the chatbot’s last training update. This only applies through ChatGPT.com, however. To use ChatGPT in any form through the native mobile app, you will still need to be logged in.
OpenAI announced a new AI “agent” called deep research that’s designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT. OpenAI says the “agent” is intended for instances where you don’t just want a quick answer or summary, but instead need to assiduously consider information from multiple websites and other sources.
OpenAI used the subreddit r/ChangeMyView to measure the persuasive abilities of its AI reasoning models. OpenAI says it collects user posts from the subreddit and asks its AI models to write replies, in a closed environment, that would change the Reddit user’s mind on a subject. The company then shows the responses to testers, who assess how persuasive the argument is, and finally OpenAI compares the AI models’ responses to human replies for that same post.
OpenAI launched a new AI “reasoning” model, o3-mini, the newest in the company’s o family of models. OpenAI first previewed the model in December alongside a more capable system called o3. OpenAI is pitching its new model as both “powerful” and “affordable.”
A new report from app analytics firm Appfigures found that over half of ChatGPT’s mobile users are under age 25, with users between ages 50 and 64 making up the second largest age demographic. The gender gap among ChatGPT users is even more significant. Appfigures estimates that across age groups, men make up 84.5% of all users.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Gov designed to provide U.S. government agencies an additional way to access the tech. ChatGPT Gov includes many of the capabilities found in OpenAI’s corporate-focused tier, ChatGPT Enterprise. OpenAI says that ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance, and could expedite internal authorization of OpenAI’s tools for the handling of non-public sensitive data.
Younger Gen Zers are embracing ChatGPT, for schoolwork, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. In a follow-up to its 2023 poll on ChatGPT usage among young people, Pew asked ~1,400 U.S.-based teens ages 13 to 17 whether they’ve used ChatGPT for homework or other school-related assignments. Twenty-six percent said that they had, double the number two years ago. Just over half of teens responding to the poll said they think it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for researching new subjects. But considering the ways ChatGPT can fall short, the results are possibly cause for alarm.
OpenAI says that it might store chats and associated screenshots from customers who use Operator, the company’s AI “agent” tool, for up to 90 days — even after a user manually deletes them. While OpenAI has a similar deleted data retention policy for ChatGPT, the retention period for ChatGPT is only 30 days, which is 60 days shorter than Operator’s.
OpenAI is launching a research preview of Operator, a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform certain actions. Operator promises to automate tasks such as booking travel accommodations, making restaurant reservations, and shopping online.
Operator, OpenAI’s agent tool, could be released sooner rather than later. Changes to ChatGPT’s code base suggest that Operator will be available as an early research preview to users on the $200 Pro subscription plan. The changes aren’t yet publicly visible, but a user on X who goes by Choi spotted these updates in ChatGPT’s client-side code. TechCrunch separately identified the same references to Operator on OpenAI’s website.
OpenAI has begun testing a feature that lets new ChatGPT users sign up with only a phone number — no email required. The feature is currently in beta in the U.S. and India. However, users who create an account using their number can’t upgrade to one of OpenAI’s paid plans without verifying their account via an email. Multi-factor authentication also isn’t supported without a valid email.
ChatGPT’s new beta feature, called tasks, allows users to set simple reminders. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to remind you when your passport expires in six months, and the AI assistant will follow up with a push notification on whatever platform you have tasks enabled. The feature will start rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users around the globe this week.
OpenAI is introducing a new way for users to customize their interactions with ChatGPT. Some users found they can specify a preferred name or nickname and “traits” they’d like the chatbot to have. OpenAI suggests traits like “Chatty,” “Encouraging,” and “Gen Z.” However, some users reported that the new options have disappeared, so it’s possible they went live prematurely.
ChatGPT Search can be fooled into generating completely misleading summaries, The Guardian has found. They found ChatGPT could be prompted to ignore negative reviews and generate “entirely positive” summaries by inserting hidden text into websites it created and that ChatGPT Search could also be made to spit out malicious code using this method.
Microsoft and OpenAI have a very specific, internal definition of AGI based on the startup’s profits, according to a new report from The Information. The two companies reportedly signed an agreement stating OpenAI has only achieved AGI when it develops AI systems that can generate at least $100 billion in profit, which is far from the rigorous technical and philosophical definition of AGI many would expect.
OpenAI released new research outlining the company’s approach to ensure AI reasoning models stay aligned with the values of their human developers. The startup used “deliberative alignment” to make o1 and o3 “think” about OpenAI’s safety policy. According to OpenAI’s research, the method decreased the rate at which o1 answered “unsafe” questions while improving its ability to answer benign ones.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the successors to its o1 reasoning model family: o3 and o3-mini. The models are not widely available yet, but safety researchers can sign up for a preview. The reveal marks the end of the “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which saw announcements for real-time vision capabilities, ChatGPT Search, and even a Santa voice for ChatGPT.
In an effort to make ChatGPT accessible to as many people as possible, OpenAI announced a 1-800 number to call the chatbot — even from a landline or a flip phone. Users can call 1-800-CHATGPT, and ChatGPT will respond to your queries in an experience that is more or less identical to Advanced Voice Mode — minus the multimodality.
OpenAI is offering 15 minutes of free calling for U.S. users. The company notes that standard carrier fees may apply.
OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT Search to free, logged in users. Search gives ChatGPT the ability to access real-time information on the web to better answer your queries, but was only available for paid users when it launched in October. Not only is Search available now for free users, but it’s also been integrated into Advanced Voice Mode.
OpenAI is blaming one of the longest outages in its history on a “new telemetry service” gone awry. OpenAI wrote in a postmortem that the outage wasn’t caused by a security incident or recent product launch, but by a telemetry service it deployed to collect Kubernetes metrics.
OpenAI announced that ChatGPT users could access a new “Santa Mode” voice during December. The feature allows users to speak with ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode, but with a Christmas twist. The voice sounds, well, “merry and bright,” as OpenAI described it. Think boomy, jolly — more or less like every Santa you’ve ever heard.
OpenAI released the real-time video capabilities for ChatGPT that it demoed nearly seven months ago. ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers can use the app to point their phones at objects and have ChatGPT respond in near-real-time. The feature can also understand what’s on a device’s screen through screen sharing.
There’s more to come from OpenAI through December 23. Tune in to our live blog to stay updated.
ChatGPT and Sora both experienced a major outage Wednesday. Though users suspected the outage was due to the rollout of ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence, OpenAI developer community lead Edwin Arbus denied it in a post on X, saying the “outage was unrelated to 12 Days of OpenAI or Apple Intelligence. We made a config change that caused many servers to become unavailable.”
Canvas, OpenAI’s collaboration-focused interface for writing and code projects, is now rolling out to all users after being in beta for ChatGPT Plus members since October 2024. The company also announced the ability to integrate Python code within Canvas as well as bringing Canvas to custom GPTs.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that due to higher than expected demand, they are pausing new sign-ups for its video generator Sora and that video generations will be slower for the time being. The company released Sora as part of its “12 Days of OpenAI” event following nearly a year of teasing the product.
OpenAI has finally released its text to video model, Sora. The model can generate videos up to 20 seconds long in 1080p based on text prompts or uploaded images, and can be “remixed” through additional user prompts. Sora is available starting today to ChatGPT Pro and Plus subscribers (except in the EU).
In Monday’s “12 Days of OpenAI” livestream, CEO Sam Altman said that ChatGPT Plus members will get 50 video generations a month, while ChatGPT Pro users will get “unlimited” generations in their “slow queue mode” and 500 “normal” generations per month.
There are still more reveals to come from OpenAI through December 23. Tune in to our live blog to stay updated.
On day one of its 12 Days of OpenAI event, the company announced a new — and expensive — subscription plan. ChatGPT Pro is a $200-per-month tier that provides unlimited access to all of OpenAI’s models, including the full version of its o1 “reasoning” model.
The full version of o1, which was released as a preview in September, can now reason about image uploads and has been trained to be “more concise in its thinking” to improve response times.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be updating all the news from OpenAI as it happens on our live blog. Follow along with us!
OpenAI announced “12 Days of OpenAI,” which will feature livestreams every weekday starting December 5 at 10 a.m. PT. Each day’s stream is said to include either a product launch or a demo in varying sizes.
At the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that ChatGPT has surpassed 300 million weekly active users. The milestone comes just a few months after the chatbot hit 200 million weekly active users in August 2024 and just over a year after reaching 100 million weekly active users in November 2023.
ChatGPT users discovered an interesting phenomenon: the popular chatbot refused to answer questions asked about a “David Mayer,” and asking it to do so caused it to freeze up instantly. While the strange behavior spawned conspiracy theories, and a slew of other names being impacted, a much more ordinary reason may be at the heart of it: digital privacy requests.
OpenAI is toying with the idea of getting into ads. CFO Sarah Friar told the Financial Times it’s weighing an ads business model, with plans to be “thoughtful” about when and where ads appear — though she later stressed that the company has “no active plans to pursue advertising.” Still, the exploration may raise eyebrows given that Sam Altman recently said ads would be a “last resort.”
A group of Canadian media companies, including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The companies behind the suit said that OpenAI infringed their copyrights and are seeking to win monetary damages — and ban OpenAI from making further use of their work.
OpenAI announced that its GPT-4o model has been updated to feature more “natural” and “engaging” creative writing abilities as well as more thorough responses and insights when accessing files uploaded by users.
ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode feature is expanding to the web, allowing users to talk to the chatbot through their browser. The conversational feature is rolling out to ChatGPT’s paying Plus, Enterprise, Teams, or Edu subscribers.
OpenAI announced the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS can now read code in a handful of developer-focused coding apps, such as VS Code, Xcode, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm2 — meaning that developers will no longer have to copy and paste their code into ChatGPT. When the feature is enabled, OpenAI will automatically send the section of code you’re working on through its chatbot as context, alongside your prompt.
Lilian Weng announced on X that she is departing OpenAI. Weng served as VP of research and safety since August, and before that was the head of OpenAI’s safety systems team. It’s the latest in a long string of AI safety researchers,policy researchers, and other executives who have exited the company in the last year.
OpenAI stated that it told around 2 million users of ChatGPT to go elsewhere for information about the 2024 U.S. election, and instead recommended trusted news sources like Reuters and the Associated Press.
In a blog post, OpenAI said that ChatGPT sent roughly a million people to CanIVote.org when they asked questions specific to voting in the lead-up to the election and rejected around 250,000 requests to generate images of the candidates over the same period.
Adding to its collection of high-profile domain names, Chat.com now redirects to ChatGPT. Last year, it was reported that HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah acquired Chat.com for $15.5 million, making it one of the top two all-time publicly reported domain sales — though OpenAI declined to state how much it paid for it.
The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses efforts is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta’s AR glasses team in March 2022. She oversaw the creation of Orion, the impressive augmented reality prototype that Meta recently showed off at its annual Connect conference.
Apple is including an option to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus inside its Settings app, according to an update to the iOS 18.2 beta spotted by 9to5Mac. This will give Apple users a direct route to sign up for OpenAI’s premium subscription plan, which costs $20 a month.
In a Reddit AMA, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that a lack of compute capacity is one major factor preventing the company from shipping products as often as it’d like, including the vision capabilities for Advanced Voice Mode first teased in May. Altman also indicated that the next major release of DALL-E, OpenAI’s image generator, has no launch timeline, and that Sora, OpenAI’s video-generating tool, has also been held back.
Altman also admitted to using ChatGPT “sometimes” to answer questions throughout the AMA.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search, an evolution of the SearchGPT prototype it unveiled this summer. Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, ChatGPT Search serves up information and photos from the web along with links to relevant sources, at which point you can ask follow-up questions to refine an ongoing search.
OpenAI has rolled out Advanced Voice Mode to ChatGPT’s desktop apps for macOS and Windows. For Mac users, that means that both ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode can coexist with Siri on the same device, leading the way for ChatGPT’s Apple Intelligence integration.
Reuters reports that OpenAI is working with TSMC and Broadcom to build an in-house AI chip, which could arrive as soon as 2026. It appears, at least for now, the company has abandoned plans to establish a network of factories for chip manufacturing and is instead focusing on in-house chip design.
OpenAI announced it’s rolling out a feature that allows users to search through their ChatGPT chat histories on the web. The new feature will let users bring up an old chat to remember something or pick back up a chat right where it was left off.
With the release of iOS 18.1, Apple Intelligence features powered by ChatGPT are now available to users. The ChatGPT features include integrated writing tools, image cleanup, article summaries, and a typing input for the redesigned Siri experience.
OpenAI denied reports that it is intending to release an AI model, code-named Orion, by December of this year. An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that they “don’t have plans to release a model code-named Orion this year,” but that leaves OpenAI substantial wiggle room.
OpenAI has begun previewing a dedicated Windows app for ChatGPT. The company says the app is an early version and is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu users with a “full experience” set to come later this year.
OpenAI struck a content deal with Hearst, the newspaper and magazine publisher known for the San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and others. The partnership will allow OpenAI to surface stories from Hearst publications with citations and direct links.
OpenAI introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT called “Canvas.” The canvas workspace allows for users to generate writing or code, then highlight sections of the work to have the model edit. Canvas is rolling out in beta to ChatGPT Plus and Teams, with a rollout to come to Enterprise and Edu tier users next week.
OpenAI has closed the largest VC round of all time. The startup announced it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion post-money. Led by previous investor Thrive Capital, the new cash brings OpenAI’s total raised to $17.9 billion, per Crunchbase.
At the first of its 2024 Dev Day events, OpenAI announced a new API tool that will let developers build nearly real-time, speech-to-speech experiences in their apps, with the choice of using six voices provided by OpenAI. These voices are distinct from those offered for ChatGPT, and developers can’t use third party voices, in order to prevent copyright issues.
OpenAI is planning to raise the price of individual ChatGPT subscriptions from $20 per month to $22 per month by the end of the year, according to a report from The New York Times. The report notes that a steeper increase could come over the next five years; by 2029, OpenAI expects it’ll charge $44 per month for ChatGPT Plus.
OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced that she is leaving the company after more than six years. Hours after the announcement, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a research VP, Barret Zoph, also left the company. CEO Sam Altman revealed the two latest resignations in a post on X, along with leadership transition plans.
After a delay, OpenAI is finally rolling out Advanced Voice Mode to an expanded set of ChatGPT’s paying customers. AVM is also getting a revamped design — the feature is now represented by a blue animated sphere instead of the animated black dots that were presented back in May. OpenAI is highlighting improvements in conversational speed, accents in foreign languages, and five new voices as part of the rollout.
A video from YouTube creator ChromaLock showcased how to modify a TI-84 graphing calculator so that it can connect to the internet and access ChatGPT, touting it as the “ultimate cheating device.” As demonstrated in the video, it’s a pretty complicated process for the average high school student to follow — but it might stoke more concerns from teachers about the ongoing concerns about ChatGPT and cheating in schools.
OpenAI unveiled a preview of OpenAI o1, also known as “Strawberry.” The collection of models are available in ChatGPT and via OpenAI’s API: o1-preview and o1 mini. The company claims that o1 can more effectively reason through math and science and fact-check itself by spending more time considering all parts of a command or question.
Unlike ChatGPT, o1 can’t browse the web or analyze files yet, is rate-limited and expensive compared to other models. OpenAI says it plans to bring o1-mini access to all free users of ChatGPT, but hasn’t set a release date.
An artist and hacker found a way to jailbreak ChatGPT to produce instructions for making powerful explosives, a request that the chatbot normally refuses. An explosives expert who reviewed the chatbot’s output told TechCrunch that the instructions could be used to make a detonatable product and was too sensitive to be released.
OpenAI announced it has surpassed 1 million paid users for its versions of ChatGPT intended for businesses, including ChatGPT Team, ChatGPT Enterprise and its educational offering, ChatGPT Edu. The company said that nearly half of OpenAI’s corporate users are based in the US.
Volkswagen is taking its ChatGPT voice assistant experiment to vehicles in the United States. Its ChatGPT-integrated Plus Speech voice assistant is an AI chatbot based on Cerence’s Chat Pro product and a LLM from OpenAI and will begin rolling out on September 6 with the 2025 Jetta and Jetta GLI models.
As part of the new deal, OpenAI will surface stories from Condé Nast properties like The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit and Wired in ChatGPT and SearchGPT. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch implied that the “multi-year” deal will involve payment from OpenAI in some form and a Condé Nast spokesperson told TechCrunch that OpenAI will have permission to train on Condé Nast content.
TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff has been playing around with OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode, in what he describes as “the most convincing taste I’ve had of an AI-powered future yet.” Compared to Siri or Alexa, Advanced Voice Mode stands out with faster response times, unique answers and the ability to answer complex questions. But the feature falls short as an effective replacement for virtual assistants.
OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian influence operation that was generating content about the U.S. presidential election. OpenAI identified five website fronts presenting as both progressive and conservative news outlets that used ChatGPT to draft several long-form articles, though it doesn’t seem that it reached much of an audience.
OpenAI has found that GPT-4o, which powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, can behave in strange ways. In a new “red teaming” report, OpenAI reveals some of GPT-4o’s weirder quirks, like mimicking the voice of the person speaking to it or randomly shouting in the middle of a conversation.
After a big jump following the release of OpenAI’s new GPT-4o “omni” model, the mobile version of ChatGPT has now seen its biggest month of revenue yet. The app pulled in $28 million in net revenue from the App Store and Google Play in July, according to data provided by app intelligence firm Appfigures.
OpenAI has built a watermarking tool that could potentially catch students who cheat by using ChatGPT — but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is debating whether to actually release it. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is researching tools that can detect writing from ChatGPT, but said it’s taking a “deliberate approach” to releasing it.
OpenAI is giving users their first access to GPT-4o’s updated realistic audio responses. The alpha version is now available to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users, and the company says the feature will gradually roll out to all Plus users in the fall of 2024. The release follows controversy surrounding the voice’s similarity to Scarlett Johansson, leading OpenAI to delay its release.
OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete with Google. SearchGPT aims to elevate search queries with “timely answers” from across the internet, as well as the ability to ask follow-up questions. The temporary prototype is currently only available to a small group of users and its publisher partners, like The Atlantic, for testing and feedback.
A new report from The Information, based on undisclosed financial information, claims OpenAI could lose up to $5 billion due to how costly the business is to operate. The report also says the company could spend as much as $7 billion in 2024 to train and operate ChatGPT.
OpenAI released its latest small AI model, GPT-4o mini. The company says GPT-4o mini, which is cheaper and faster than OpenAI’s current AI models, outperforms industry leading small AI models on reasoning tasks involving text and vision. GPT-4o mini will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo as the smallest model OpenAI offers.
OpenAI announced a partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study how AI can be employed by scientists in order to advance research in healthcare and bioscience. This follows other health-related research collaborations at OpenAI, including Moderna and Color Health.
OpenAI announced it has trained a model off of GPT-4, dubbed CriticGPT, which aims to find errors in ChatGPT’s code output so they can make improvements and better help so-called human “AI trainers” rate the quality and accuracy of ChatGPT responses.
OpenAI and TIME announced a multi-year strategic partnership that brings the magazine’s content, both modern and archival, to ChatGPT. As part of the deal, TIME will also gain access to OpenAI’s technology in order to develop new audience-based products.
OpenAI planned to start rolling out its advanced Voice Mode feature to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but it says lingering issues forced it to postpone the launch to July. OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks.
ChatGPT for macOS is now available for all users. With the app, users can quickly call up ChatGPT by using the keyboard combination of Option + Space. The app allows users to upload files and other photos, as well as speak to ChatGPT from their desktop and search through their past conversations.
Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. The ChatGPT integrations, powered by GPT-4o, will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Features exclusive to paying ChatGPT users will also be available through Apple devices.
Scarlett Johansson has been invited to testify about the controversy surrounding OpenAI’s Sky voice at a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. In a letter, Rep. Nancy Mace said Johansson’s testimony could “provide a platform” for concerns around deepfakes.
ChatGPT was down twice in one day: one multi-hour outage in the early hours of the morning Tuesday and another outage later in the day that is still ongoing. Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity also experienced some issues.
The Atlantic and Vox Media have announced licensing and product partnerships with OpenAI. Both agreements allow OpenAI to use the publishers’ current content to generate responses in ChatGPT, which will feature citations to relevant articles. Vox Media says it will use OpenAI’s technology to build “audience-facing and internal applications,” while The Atlantic will build a new experimental product called Atlantic Labs.
OpenAI announced a new deal with management consulting giant PwC. The company will become OpenAI’s biggest customer to date, covering 100,000 users, and will become OpenAI’s first partner for selling its enterprise offerings to other businesses.
OpenAI announced in a blog post that it has recently begun training its next flagship model to succeed GPT-4. The news came in an announcement of its new safety and security committee, which is responsible for informing safety and security decisions across OpenAI’s products.
On the The TED AI Show podcast, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner revealed that the board did not know about ChatGPT until its launch in November 2022. Toner also said that Sam Altman gave the board inaccurate information about the safety processes the company had in place and that he didn’t disclose his involvement in the OpenAI Startup Fund.
The launch of GPT-4o has driven the company’s biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile, despite the model being freely available on the web. Mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s most recent launch.
After demoing its new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI announced it is pausing one of its voices, Sky, after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson in “Her.”
OpenAI explained in a blog post that Sky’s voice is “not an imitation” of the actress and that AI voices should not intentionally mimic the voice of a celebrity. The blog post went on to explain how the company chose its voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.
OpenAI announced new updates for easier data analysis within ChatGPT. Users can now upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, interact with tables and charts, and export customized charts for presentations. The company says these improvements will be added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.
OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit that will give the company access to “real-time, structured and unique content” from the social network. Content from Reddit will be incorporated into ChatGPT, and the companies will work together to bring new AI-powered features to Reddit users and moderators.
OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new omni model, GPT-4o, which has a black hole-like interface, as well as voice and vision capabilities that feel eerily like something out of “Her.” GPT-4o is set to roll out “iteratively” across its developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks.
The company announced it’s building a tool, Media Manager, that will allow creators to better control how their content is being used to train generative AI models — and give them an option to opt out. The goal is to have the new tool in place and ready to use by 2025.
In a new peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions, OpenAI also released a new NSFW policy. Though it’s intended to start a conversation about how it might allow explicit images and text in its AI products, it raises questions about whether OpenAI — or any generative AI vendor — can be trusted to handle sensitive content ethically.
In a new partnership, OpenAI will get access to developer platform Stack Overflow’s API and will get feedback from developers to improve the performance of their AI models. In return, OpenAI will include attributions to Stack Overflow in ChatGPT. However, the deal was not favorable to some Stack Overflow users — leading to some sabotaging their answer in protest.
Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment” to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot.
OpenAI has partnered with another news publisher in Europe, London’s Financial Times, that the company will be paying for content access. “Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries,” the FT wrote in a press release.
OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo and has plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move underscores how OpenAI will likely need to localize its technology to different languages as it expands.
According to Reuters, OpenAI’s Sam Altman hosted hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies across several cities in April, pitching versions of its AI services intended for corporate use.
Premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now use an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo. The new model brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base.
You can now use ChatGPT without signing up for an account, but it won’t be quite the same experience. You won’t be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other features associated with a persistent account. This version of ChatGPT will have “slightly more restrictive content policies,” according to OpenAI. When TechCrunch asked for more details, however, the response was unclear:
“The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience,” a spokesperson said.
TechCrunch found that the OpenAI’s GPT Store is flooded with bizarre, potentially copyright-infringing GPTs. A cursory search pulls up GPTs that claim to generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel properties, but serve as little more than funnels to third-party paid services and advertise themselves as being able to bypass AI content detection tools.
In a court filing opposing OpenAI’s motion to dismiss The New York Times’ lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, the newspaper asserted that “OpenAI’s attention-grabbing claim that The Times ‘hacked’ its products is as irrelevant as it is false.” The New York Times also claimed that some users of ChatGPT used the tool to bypass its paywalls.
At a SXSW 2024 panel, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s VP of consumer product dodged a question on whether artists whose work was used to train generative AI models should be compensated. While OpenAI lets artists “opt out” of and remove their work from the datasets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, some artists have described the tool as onerous.
ChatGPT’s environmental impact appears to be massive. According to a report from The New Yorker, ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day.
OpenAI released a new Read Aloud feature for the web version of ChatGPT as well as the iOS and Android apps. The feature allows ChatGPT to read its responses to queries in one of five voice options and can speak 37 languages, according to the company. Read aloud is available on both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 models.
ChatGPT can now read responses to you.
On iOS or Android, tap and hold the message and then tap “Read Aloud”. We’ve also started rolling on web – click the “Read Aloud” button below the message. pic.twitter.com/KevIkgAFbG
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 4, 2024
As part of a new partnership with OpenAI, the Dublin City Council will use GPT-4 to craft personalized itineraries for travelers, including recommendations of unique and cultural destinations, in an effort to support tourism across Europe.
New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate. The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure “well above” reasonable demands.
ChatGPT users found that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours, prompting OpenAI to investigate the issue. Incidents varied from repetitive phrases to confusing and incorrect answers to queries. The issue was resolved by OpenAI the following morning.
The dating app giant home to Tinder, Match and OkCupid announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in an enthusiastic press release written with the help of ChatGPT. The AI tech will be used to help employees with work-related tasks and come as part of Match’s $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024.
As part of a test, OpenAI began rolling out new “memory” controls for a small portion of ChatGPT free and paid users, with a broader rollout to follow. The controls let you tell ChatGPT explicitly to remember something, see what it remembers or turn off its memory altogether. Note that deleting a chat from chat history won’t erase ChatGPT’s or a custom GPT’s memories — you must delete the memory itself.
We’re testing ChatGPT’s ability to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful.
This feature is being rolled out to a small portion of Free and Plus users, and it’s easy to turn on or off. https://t.co/1Tv355oa7V pic.twitter.com/BsFinBSTbs
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024
Initially limited to a small subset of free and subscription users, Temporary Chat lets you have a dialogue with a blank slate. With Temporary Chat, ChatGPT won’t be aware of previous conversations or access memories but will follow custom instructions if they’re enabled.
But, OpenAI says it may keep a copy of Temporary Chat conversations for up to 30 days for “safety reasons.”
Use temporary chat for conversations in which you don’t want to use memory or appear in history. pic.twitter.com/H1U82zoXyC
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024
Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged in” for different use cases and needs.
You can now bring GPTs into any conversation in ChatGPT – simply type @ and select the GPT.
This allows you to add relevant GPTs with the full context of the conversation. pic.twitter.com/Pjn5uIy9NF
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 30, 2024
Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report.
OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy, following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy’s data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven’t been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals.”
In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it’s partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults. The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy.
After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded. The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company’s top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent.
In a blog post, OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5’s API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce “laziness” that users have experienced.
Expanding the platform for @OpenAIDevs: new generation of embedding models, updated GPT-4 Turbo, and lower pricing on GPT-3.5 Turbo. https://t.co/7wzCLwB1ax
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 25, 2024
OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign. The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed “chatbots impersonating candidates” as against its policy.
Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT’s Enterprise tier, which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course and more. It marks OpenAI’s first partnership with a higher education institution.
After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences “verbatim.” Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI.
In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be “fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support.” Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024.
OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and “encoding” public input on its models’ behaviors into OpenAI products and services. This comes as a part of OpenAI’s public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a “democratic process” for determining the rules AI systems follow.
In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for “personalized persuasion.”
Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions, and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting.
The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT.
Snapshot of how we’re preparing for 2024’s worldwide elections:
• Working to prevent abuse, including misleading deepfakes
• Providing transparency on AI-generated content
• Improving access to authoritative voting informationhttps://t.co/qsysYy5l0L— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 15, 2024
In an unannounced update to its usage policy, OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of “military and warfare.” In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to “harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”
Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs.
After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI’s GPT Store is finally here. The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client, and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.
To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise or the newly launched ChatGPT Team.
the GPT store is live!https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2
fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today.
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 10, 2024
Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee. OpenAI argued that it would be “impossible” to train AI models without using copyrighted materials, and that they believe copyright law “does not forbid training.”
OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times’s lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit.
In the response, OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use. It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to “act responsibly.”
We build AI to empower people, including journalists.
Our position on the @nytimes lawsuit:
• Training is fair use, but we provide an opt-out
• “Regurgitation” is a rare bug we’re driving to zero
• The New York Times is not telling the full storyhttps://t.co/S6fSaDsfKb— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 8, 2024
After being delayed in December, OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company’s updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they’re eligible for listing in the GPT Store. OpenAI’s update notably didn’t include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront.
GPT Store launching next week – OpenAI pic.twitter.com/I6mkZKtgZG
— Manish Singh (@refsrc) January 4, 2024
In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited. The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT’s impact on people’s privacy.
ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI. The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.
November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use.
Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4o.
There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus.
Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns.
Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool.
Most recently, Microsoft announced at its 2023 Build conference that it is integrating it ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT. And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space.
GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.
A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn’t necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they’ll give canned responses to questions.
ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt.
Yes.
Due to the nature of how these models work, they don’t know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That’s a problem when you’re using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn’t commit, that may well at this point be libel.
We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry.
Yes, there is a free ChatGPT mobile app for iOS and Android users.
It’s not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words.
Yes, it was released March 1, 2023.
Everyday examples include programming, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc.
Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc.
It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can’t necessarily program an entire app’s worth of code. That’s because ChatGPT lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn’t always appropriate for the specific context in which it’s being used.
Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet.
Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, and developers are creating open source alternatives.
OpenAI has said that individuals in “certain jurisdictions” (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out this form. This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression “in accordance with applicable laws”.
The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled “OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request”.
In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on “legitimate interest” (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out — when it writes: “See here for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models.”
Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI’s technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm.
An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT’s false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service.
CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect.
Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools, have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with.
There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes.
Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase. Another is ChatX. More launch every day.
Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests, they’re inconsistent at best.
No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users’ conversations to other people on the service.
None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT.
Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
While you’re busy Ghibli-fying your images with ChatGPT’s new image-generation capabilities, OpenAI is out raising a ton more cash. The company is close to finalizing a new $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The report noted that other funds, including the hedge fund Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders Fund, and Altimeter Capital Management, are also in discussions with OpenAI to participate in the round, with Magnetar potentially putting in $1 billion.
Bloomberg said SoftBank will initially put in $7.5 billion, with an additional $2.5 billion coming from an investor syndicate. The report added that a second tranche is expected this year, wherein the Japanese conglomerate will invest another $22.5 billion, and $7.5 billion more will be syndicated.
OpenAI last raised a $6.6 billion round led by Thrive Capital in October 2024 at a $157 billion valuation. Bloomberg’s latest report said the new mega round will take the company to a massive $300 billion valuation.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.”
In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen AI-generated images representing Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk, “The Lord of the Rings“, and President Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even seems to have made his new profile picture a Studio Ghibli-style image, presumably made with GPT-4o’s native image generator. Users seem to be uploading existing images and pictures into ChatGPT and asking the chatbot to re-create it in new styles.
OpenAI’s latest update comes on the heels of Google’s release of a similar AI image feature in its Gemini Flash model, which also sparked a viral moment earlier in March when people used it to remove watermarks from images.
OpenAI’s and Google’s latest tools make it easier than ever to re-create the styles of copyrighted works — simply by typing a text prompt. Together, these new AI image features seem to reignite concerns at the core of several lawsuits against generative AI model developers. If these companies are training on copyrighted works, are they violating copyright law?
According to Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer at the law firm Neal & McDevitt, products like GPT-4o’s native image generator operate in a legal gray area today. Style is not explicitly protected by copyright, according to Brown, meaning OpenAI does not appear to be breaking the law simply by generating images that look like Studio Ghibli movies.
However, Brown says it’s plausible that OpenAI achieved this likeness by training its model on millions of frames from Ghibli’s films. Even if that was the case, several courts are still deciding whether training AI models on copyrighted works falls under fair use protections.
“I think this raises the same question that we’ve been asking ourselves for a couple years now,” said Brown in an interview. “What are the copyright infringement implications of going out, crawling the web, and copying into these databases?”
The New York Times and several publishers are in active lawsuits against OpenAI, claiming the company trained its AI models on copyrighted works without proper attribution or payment. There have been similar claims brought in lawsuits against other leading AI companies, including Meta and AI image-generation startup Midjourney.
In a statement to TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson says that while ChatGPT refuses to replicate “the style of individual living artists,” OpenAI does permit it to replicate “broader studio styles.” Of course, it’s worth noting there are living artists who are credited with pioneering their studio’s unique styles, such as Studio Ghibli’s co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki.
Evidently, users have also been able to use GPT-4o’s native image-generation feature to re-create styles from other studios and artists. Someone else made a Marc Andreessen portrait in the style of Dr. Seuss, and a married couple re-created their wedding photos in the style of Pixar.
We tested several popular AI image generators — including ones available in Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok, and Playground.ai — to see their ability to match Studio Ghibli’s style. We found OpenAI’s new image generator created the most accurate replica of the animation studio’s style.
For now, OpenAI’s and Google’s new image features present a leap forward in what AI models can generate, which seems to be driving a surge in usage. OpenAI delayed the rollout of its new image tool to free-tier users on Wednesday, citing high demand. That may be the most important thing for these companies today, but we’ll they’ll have to wait for the courts to weigh in on their legality.
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