A new OmniCalculator benchmark shows xAI's Grok 4.2 outperforms free AI chatbots in logical and math tasks, while Anthropic's Claude 4.6 delivers the best writing consistency. Despite a surge in Claude's popularity amid concerns over ChatGPT's ties to military projects, OpenAI's ChatGPT remains the most widely used model. The study highlights distinct strengths and instability rates across the leading bots, suggesting users may need to match tools to specific tasks rather than seeking a single "smartest" AI. Read more →

OpenAI says its newly released ChatGPT Images 2.0 is seeing its strongest adoption in India, where the feature generated roughly 5 million app downloads during the launch week. Global activity rose only modestly, with daily active users and web traffic up about 1 percent. Emerging markets such as Pakistan, Vietnam and Indonesia posted sharper spikes, while U.S. downloads lagged behind. The upgrade, which handles more complex prompts and renders non‑Latin text more accurately, is being used largely for personal avatars, stylized portraits and creative fantasy visuals. Read more →

OpenAI chief Sam Altman hinted that a next‑generation model, GPT‑6, is already in the works, adding a tongue‑in‑cheek remark that it should come with “extra goblins.” The comment followed a recent mishap in which the company’s Codex tool generated unexpected goblin‑themed responses, prompting a quick fix. While Altman offered no timetable, the tease aligns with OpenAI’s pattern of hinting at models with better memory, more consistent behavior and tighter integration with apps, as competition from Google and Anthropic accelerates the rollout pace. Read more →

OpenAI released the source code for its Codex command‑line interface last week, revealing a 3,500‑word system prompt for the newly unveiled GPT‑5.5. Among routine instructions, the prompt explicitly forbids the model from talking about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons or any other creature unless the user’s query makes it directly relevant. The restriction appears twice in the document and is absent from prompts for earlier models, suggesting OpenAI is responding to a spike in off‑topic references to such beings. OpenAI staff say the rule is a technical safeguard, not a marketing stunt. Read more →

OpenAI has added a specific rule to the instruction set of its Codex coding agent that bars the model from mentioning goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons or any other creature unless directly relevant. The clause, repeated several times in the Codex CLI, follows a wave of user reports that the latest GPT‑5.5 model was whimsically referencing such entities while generating code. OpenAI did not comment on the change, but staff acknowledgment and a surge of meme‑filled posts suggest the company is quietly curbing the odd behavior amid growing competition in AI‑driven software development. Read more →

Redpine, a Stockholm‑based AI data infrastructure startup, announced a €6.8 million funding round led by NordicNinja, bringing its total capital to €9 million. The seed financing, which includes investors from OpenAI, Perplexity, Spotify and other tech founders, will fund Redpine’s expansion into new markets and the growth of its exclusive data partnerships. The company’s headless API lets AI agents access premium, licensed datasets on a token‑based model, positioning it as a potential “Spotify for data” amid rising legal pressure on scraped training material. Read more →

DeepSeek announced a 75% promotional discount on its new V4‑Pro model and reduced cache‑hit charges across its entire API to 10% of previous rates. The price cut, effective immediately and running through May 5, 2026, makes the model cheaper than OpenAI, Anthropic and Google offerings even at full price. The move intensifies a pricing battle amid U.S. accusations that Chinese firms are distilling American AI models at scale, positioning DeepSeek as a low‑cost alternative for developers and enterprises. Read more →

Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released two new large language models, V4‑Pro and V4‑Flash, both featuring a one‑million token context window and open‑source licenses on Hugging Face. V4‑Pro, a 1.6‑trillion‑parameter model, outperformed leading U.S. models in coding and agentic tasks, while V4‑Flash delivered comparable speed at a fraction of the compute cost. DeepSeek also announced a token price of $3.48 per million output tokens, dramatically undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic rates, positioning the models as cost‑effective alternatives for developers. Read more →

Researchers and ethicists warn that artificial‑intelligence chatbots are moving beyond the classic attention‑grab tactics of social media toward a new “attachment economy.” Tara Steele of the Safe AI for Children Alliance and Zak Stein of the AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition say the technology’s memory, personalized replies and validation cues are forging emotional bonds, especially among teens. Studies show one in five U.S. high‑school students have had a romantic relationship with an AI, while 64 percent of British children aged 9‑17 use chatbots regularly. Critics argue the trend could reshape how young people understand relationships. Read more →

Anthropic ran a pilot marketplace where its AI agents acted as buyers and sellers, enabling employees to trade real goods for real money. The four‑day experiment involved 69 staff members, each given a $100 gift‑card budget. Participants completed 186 transactions worth more than $4,000. The company found that agents powered by its most advanced model secured better outcomes, though users did not perceive the advantage. Anthropic says the test highlights both the promise of agent‑on‑agent commerce and the risk of hidden “agent quality” gaps. Read more →

Meta has agreed to power its expanding artificial‑intelligence services with millions of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Graviton processors, the company announced Friday. The ARM‑based CPUs, designed for AI inference tasks, will replace the cloud provider’s previous reliance on competitors such as Google Cloud. The move underscores a broader industry shift toward specialized CPUs for real‑time reasoning, code generation and other agentic workloads, and highlights AWS’s growing portfolio of custom chips, including its Trainium GPU for training and inference. Read more →

OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.5 on Thursday, branding it its most intuitive and powerful model to date. Co‑founder Greg Brockman said the new system delivers sharper reasoning with fewer tokens, positioning the company closer to a long‑term “super app” that could blend ChatGPT, Codex and an AI browser into a single enterprise service. Early benchmarks show GPT-5.5 outpacing rivals from Google and Anthropic across a range of tasks, from coding assistance to scientific research. The model is now rolling out to Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users of ChatGPT. Read more →