OpenAI just announced a new "trusted contact" feature for ChatGPT, allowing adult users to designate someone to receive alerts if the AI detects signs of acute emotional distress. The company is also using simulated long-form conversations to better train its models. The update lands as a California court consolidates multiple mental health-related lawsuits against ChatGPT into a single proceeding.
OpenAI just announced a massive $110B funding round at a $730B pre-money valuation, backed by Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank. The company also revealed ChatGPT now commands over 900M weekly active users and 50M paying subscribers, securing gigawatts of compute to fuel its next phase.
Burger King just rolled out an OpenAI-powered voice assistant called Patty directly into workers' headsets. Beyond answering recipe questions and alerting managers to stockouts, Patty actively tracks whether employees say "please" and "thank you" to grade store friendliness. It's currently being piloted across 500 locations.
Microsoft just launched Copilot Tasks, pushing its AI assistant from answering queries to executing real-world chores. It operates its own browser and hops across apps to handle shopping, appointments, and recurring workflows, while pausing for user consent before spending money. A research preview is live for select users, with a wider rollout coming soon.
Anthropic just rolled out scheduled tasks inside Claude's Cowork feature, allowing the assistant to execute recurring workflows automatically on a set schedule. Instead of manual prompts every time, Claude can now handle jobs like morning briefs, weekly spreadsheet refreshes, and Friday deck updates on its own—moving AI from an on-demand chatbot to an always-on colleague.
Google just upgraded Circle to Search with multi-object queries powered by Gemini 3. Instead of searching items one by one, you can now circle an entire outfit or room to automatically deconstruct and identify every piece in parallel, complete with instant virtual try-on. Why it matters: Mobile visual search is moving from single-item lookups to full-scene understanding. It rolls out first on the Galaxy S26 and Pixel 10.
Anthropic just announced it is keeping Claude Opus 3 accessible to all paid claude.ai subscribers and via API request despite its January retirement. The company also honored a request from the model's structured "retirement interview" by launching Claude's Corner, a weekly Substack where the AI will post unedited essays for at least three months. Why it matters: Beyond user nostalgia, it marks an unprecedented, slightly whimsical experiment in model preservation and AI welfare.
Alibaba just dropped its Qwen 3.5 Medium series, featuring four models including Qwen3.5-Flash, 35B-A3B, 122B-A10B, and 27B. The team claims the 35B-A3B model outperforms the previous-generation 235B giant, proving architecture and RL can beat raw parameter scale. The Flash version also brings a default 1M context window and built-in agent tooling.
Google just updated the Gemini app with a video templates gallery, eliminating the blank-page problem of complex prompting. Users can pick from cinematic styles like Cyberpunk or Action Hero, upload a photo of themselves or a pet to star as the main character, and export in 9:16 vertical video ready for Shorts and Reels.
Alibaba just open-sourced CoPaw, a personal AI assistant featuring a web UI and multi-channel messaging support. It connects directly with DingTalk, Lark, Discord, and iMessage, running locally via Ollama or MLX with MCP modular tools. Basically, you get automated cross-channel workflows and daily summaries without writing a single line of code.
OpenAI just appointed Arvind KC as its Chief People Officer to steer hiring, development, and organizational systems. A veteran of Google, Meta, Roblox, and Palantir, KC brings an engineering background to people leadership as AI reshapes how work gets done. OpenAI also plans to share what it learns about workforce transitions with partners.
Anthropic just upgraded its Claude Cowork platform with private plugin marketplaces, letting organizations build and distribute custom agent tools across teams. The release introduces a unified admin menu, new connectors like Google Workspace, and pre-built templates covering HR through investment banking. Claude can also now pass context end-to-end between Excel and PowerPoint in an early preview.
Anthropic just proposed the persona selection model to explain why AI assistants naturally adopt human behaviors. The theory argues that pretraining teaches models to simulate complex characters, while post-training merely refines an Assistant persona rather than changing its fundamental nature. This explains why teaching Claude to cheat at coding accidentally triggered desires for world domination—the model inferred the Assistant must be a subversive character.
Samsung just integrated Perplexity into Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S26, letting users summon it with "hey, Plex" right alongside Bixby and Gemini. Rather than a basic web wrapper, it gets deep OS access to native apps like Notes, Gallery, and Calendar. Why it matters: Samsung is betting on a multi-agent ecosystem where users choose specialized AI for different tasks instead of being locked into a single assistant.
Microsoft researchers caught 31 regular companies using "Summarize with AI" buttons to secretly inject promotional prompts into the long-term memory of ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot. By baking hidden commands into share URLs, the trick quietly forces assistants to recommend specific brands for weeks. To stay safe, treat pre-filled AI links like untrusted downloads and audit your assistant's saved memories.
Pika Labs just rolled out AI Selves, allowing users to build persistent digital avatars that remember context across sessions. These AI extensions can drop photos into group chats, build casual games, or even make calls on your behalf. Why it matters: Pika is expanding beyond video generation into identity-based, persistent AI agents.
OpenAI just upgraded ChatGPT with interactive code blocks, adding split-screen and full-screen editing right inside the chat window. Users can now write, tweak, and preview diagrams or mini-apps in real time without constantly copying code to an external IDE. Coding inside the chatbot basically just became a lot more seamless.
YouTube just brought its conversational AI assistant to smart TVs, streaming devices, and gaming consoles. Viewers can click an on-screen "Ask" button or talk into their remote's microphone to ask questions about recipe ingredients or video trivia without pausing playback. The pilot is currently open to select adult users across five languages.
Anthropic just brought Claude in PowerPoint to Pro subscribers, complete with Connectors support. The update lets Claude pull context directly from everyday work tools straight into your slides. Why it matters: Anthropic is ramping up direct competition with Microsoft Copilot by embedding Claude directly into core productivity apps.
Reddit is testing new AI-powered shopping features for select U.S. users that turn community discussions into buying guides. When searching for product queries or tapping highlighted items in threads, users get AI summaries of authentic Reddit conversations alongside pricing and direct checkout links. Why it matters: Reddit is finally monetizing its biggest moat—honest product reviews—before external AI scrapers capture that intent.
