OpenAI AI News & Updates

OpenAI Chair Envisions AI Agents as Future of Customer Experience

OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor discussed at Mobile World Congress how AI agents represent a transformative technology for customer service, predicting they could become brands' primary digital interface within 5-10 years. Taylor emphasized creating domain-specific AI implementations with appropriate guardrails, while acknowledging the need for public-private partnerships to address workforce disruption as these technologies evolve.

OpenAI Launches $50 Million Academic Research Consortium

OpenAI has established a new consortium called NextGenAI with a $50 million commitment to support AI research at prestigious academic institutions including Harvard, Oxford, and MIT. The initiative will provide research grants, computing resources, and API access to students, educators, and researchers, potentially filling gaps as the Trump administration reduces federal AI research funding.

OpenAI Expands Sora Video Generator to European Markets

OpenAI has made its video generation model Sora available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers in the European Union, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. This release comes months after the model's initial unveiling in February 2024, when it was released to subscribers in other regions but notably excluded EU users.

OpenAI Faces GPU Shortage for GPT-4.5 Rollout

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the company is facing GPU shortages that are forcing a staggered rollout of its new GPT-4.5 model. The massive and expensive model, which is being priced at $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens, will initially be available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers before expanding to Plus customers.

OpenAI Launches GPT-4.5 Orion with Diminishing Returns from Scale

OpenAI has released GPT-4.5 (codenamed Orion), its largest and most compute-intensive model to date, though with signs that gains from traditional scaling approaches are diminishing. Despite outperforming previous GPT models in some areas like factual accuracy and creative tasks, it falls short of newer AI reasoning models on difficult academic benchmarks, suggesting the industry may be approaching the limits of unsupervised pre-training.

OpenAI Delays API Release of Deep Research Model Due to Persuasion Concerns

OpenAI has decided not to release its deep research model to its developer API while it reconsiders its approach to assessing AI persuasion risks. The model, an optimized version of OpenAI's o3 reasoning model, demonstrated superior persuasive capabilities compared to the company's other available models in internal testing, raising concerns about potential misuse despite its high computing costs.

Microsoft Reduces Data Center Footprint Amid Industry Expansion

Microsoft has canceled leases totaling approximately two data centers' worth of capacity with multiple providers. This contraction stands in contrast to significant industry expansion, including the $500 billion Stargate project by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, and raises questions about Microsoft's expectations for future AI demand.

OpenAI Expands Operator AI Agent to Multiple International Markets

OpenAI has announced the international expansion of Operator, its AI agent capable of performing tasks like booking tickets and making reservations on behalf of users. The service, which launched in January in the US, is now available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in multiple countries including Australia, Canada, India, and the UK, though notably excluded from the EU and several other European countries.

OpenAI Reports Massive User Growth with 400M Weekly Users

OpenAI has announced it now serves 400 million weekly active users, up from 300 million in December 2024, demonstrating rapid growth in consumer adoption. On the enterprise side, the company has reached 2 million paying enterprise users, doubling since September 2024, while developer API traffic has doubled in the past six months.

OpenAI Plans Special Voting Rights to Safeguard Board Against Takeover Attempts

OpenAI is considering giving its nonprofit board special voting rights that would allow it to overrule major investors, protecting against hostile takeovers like the recent $97.4 billion offer from Elon Musk and investors. This move comes as OpenAI transitions from a capped-profit structure to a public benefit corporation by late 2026, with plans to separate its nonprofit arm with its own staff and leadership team.