Openai – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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OpenAI kicked off an AI revolution with DALL-E and ChatGPT, making the organization the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom. Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI became a story unto itself when Altman was briefly fired and then brought back after pressure from staff and Microsoft, an investor and close partner.

Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Spike Jonze, director of Her, warned of AI systems’ ability to manipulate.

“AIs that pretend to be human are, you know, manipulative,” Jonze said Wednesday at Replit’s Vibecon conference in New York City. “The kids need to grow up knowing these are going to be very, very convincing and very seductive — and very useful and very powerful — but they’re still just a system, an incredible system of pattern recognition.”

Barret Zoph is out at OpenAI again after just five months

He rejoined the company in January after a stint as co-founder of Mira Murati’s competitor, Thinking Machines Lab.

Hayden Field
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Co-lead of Gemini joins OpenAI.

Noam Shazeer spent twenty years at Google before returning in 2024 after the Big G reportedly paid Character.AI — a company co-founded by Shazeer in 2021 — $2.7 billion to bring him and a team of researchers back home.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
OpenAI is sunsetting Pulse, which showed you custom daily digests in ChatGPT.

Alongside the announcement of an updated experience for scheduling tasks, OpenAI said that Pulse would be going away “in the next 14 days” and suggested using scheduled tasks for a daily briefing instead.

Pulse was short-lived: the company launched it in September.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Elon Musk loses against OpenAI in court, again.

A month after a jury dismissed Elon’s claims in the Musk v. Altman case, US District Judge Rita Lin dismissed an xAI lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets and poaching employees. This time, it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, unlike when she dismissed the case in February.

The judge wrote in her ruling that continuing the case “would be futile.”

The future of Hollywood isn’t feeding prompts into vanilla gen AI models 

AI wasn’t just slop at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Nick Statt
Nick Statt
Microsoft swears its OpenAI breakup isn’t a messy divorce.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman came on Decoder this week to talk about the path to superintelligence and the company’s ever-evolving relationship with OpenAI. When asked whether Microsoft was using Build to flex its independence from OpenAI like a “freshly single divorcée,” Suleyman had this to say:

Definitely not. No, not at all. Look, I mean, obviously that’s a cool headline and a fun phrase. But the reality is that we are in partnership with OpenAI for years and years to come… So naturally, that’s going to continue. And so I think that’s just a natural course of these sorts of partnerships.

I don’t think it’s anything untoward or surprising. I think OpenAI is very understanding and supportive of that. I mean, they’ve obviously been an incredibly fast-growing company, and they understand that we have to pursue our own agenda as well.

Microsoft’s AI chief says superintelligence is near, but won’t take your job
Play

Mustafa Suleyman on automation, OpenAI, and why it’s ‘dangerous’ to call AI ‘alive.’

Nilay Patel
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
“Chat is dead.”

That’s according to a “senior OpenAI employee,” speaking to the Financial Times. The FT reports that OpenAI’s frequently-rumored “superapp” overhaul of ChatGPT is rolling out in the “coming weeks,” and “will initially appear as changes to ChatGPT’s website and mobile apps, encouraging customers towards using coding, image-generation and apps from external partners.”

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Sam Altman reportedly talked to the Trump administration about taking a stake in OpenAI.

The CEO pitched the idea as a way to bring economic benefits from AI to the public, according to NOTUS, which added that Altman first pitched the idea to President Donald Trump early last year.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
ChatGPT’s upgraded memory system is rolling out to everyone.

OpenAI is building upon its “dreaming” feature that allows ChatGPT to sort through your conversations and save information in the background. With the update, OpenAI says ChatGPT is better at updating memories and “remembering” your preferences across conversations.

ChatGPT Plus and Pro users can access the update now, while free users will get it in the coming weeks.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
ChatGPT reportedly hit 1 billion monthly active users faster than any other app.

According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT reached the milestone last month, roughly three years after launching, Reuters reports. It apparently passed 1 billion MAUs faster than the other apps that have hit the benchmark, including Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Microsoft and OpenAI broke up — now they’re ready to fight

‘We have to prove that we can do everything that we need to from the ground up,’ said AI chief Mustafa Suleyman.

Hayden Field and Tom Warren
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
With 5 million weekly users, OpenAI says Codex isn’t just for programmers.

As Microsoft shows off its AI tools at Build, close frienemy OpenAI is once again promoting Codex as something for all kinds of information and knowledge-based work that goes beyond ChatGPT’s features. It’s launching new plugins, and says that business and enterprise customers have access to a new preview capable of building “interactive, hosted websites and apps” that it can keep updated with new data.

An OpenAI Codex created document for an imaginary Blossom Widgets Enterprise Summit event
Image: OpenAI
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Florida is suing OpenAI over user safety concerns.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier accuses OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of promoting ChatGPT even though its use can allegedly lead to “self-harm, cognitive decline, and behavioral addiction,” according to NBC News.

The state is seeking penalties and a court order instead of criminal charges, but its criminal investigation into OpenAI is ongoing.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
OpenAI’s Codex can now control your Windows computer, too.

After launching on Mac, Codex’s computer use feature is headed to Windows, which means the app can “see” your screen and perform tasks on your device. OpenAI says you can also manage and review Codex’s jobs while away from the computer using the ChatGPT app.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
OpenAI is sunsetting ChatGPT’s Canvas interface.

The feature, which let you edit code or text side-by-side with ChatGPT, will no longer be available with GPT-5.5 Instant or GPT-5.5 Thinking, according to OpenAI. ChatGPT subscribers can still access Canvas for a “limited time” through legacy models.

OpenAI is also trying to make GPT-5.5 Instant’s responses easier to read by trimming their length and cutting down on “bullet-heavy” text.

AI warfare is already here

Anthropic’s fight with the Pentagon highlights the risks of autonomous warfare — but obscures just how close it is.

Hayden Field
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
No Cannes for Critterz.

Critterz — AGC Studios’ animated feature that was produced using OpenAI’s tech — was originally scheduled to make its debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But that’s no longer the case following OpenAI’s decision to shut Sora down back in March.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
ChatGPT for PowerPoint generates presentations with prompts.

The new ChatGPT integration for Microsoft PowerPoint, like an earlier add-on for Excel and Google Sheets, adds a sidebar where users can create or edit presentations using chatbot prompts along with documents, images, and other source material.

The feature is available now in beta for ChatGPT users with Business, Enterprise, Edu, Teacher, K-12, Free, Go, Pro, and Plus plans.

A screenshot of a ChatGPT add-on running in Microsoft PowerPoint
Image: OpenAI / Microsoft
Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Aleksander Madry is leaving OpenAI.

Madry had been one of the company’s top safety executives (“head of preparedness”) before he was reassigned to a role focused on AI reasoning last summer. On Thursday, he announced he’s leaving OpenAI to work on something new, centered on AI’s impact on the economy.

Aleksander Madry’s post

[X (formerly Twitter)]

Musk v. Altman: Much ado about nothing
Play

We sent Liz Lopatto to Musk v. Altman and all we got was this episode of Decoder

Nilay Patel
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Former Tesla AI boss Andrej Karpathy is joining Anthropic.

Karpathy, who had also been on the founding team of OpenAI, says he will be working on R&D at Anthropic. Previously, he had been working on “new kind of school that is AI native,” and he says he’s still “deeply passionate about education” and plans to go back to it “in time.”

A screenshot of an X post from Andrej Karpathy. It says: “Personal update: I’ve joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.”
A screenshot of an X post from Andrej Karpathy.
Image: Andrej Karpathy on X
Musk v. Altman proved that AI is led by the wrong people

Public opinion of the AI industry is already sinking. A parade of untrustworthy executives makes it look worse.

Hayden Field
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
The jury has delivered a unanimous verdict.

That was quick (about two hours).

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
An observer has just been ejected from the court by the US marshals.

I assume because he was recording, since the marshal said, “Give me your phone.” There have been several incidents of people attempting to record or take pictures throughout the trial — but I honestly am not sure why you’d record today of all days.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
C. Paul Wazzan is the expert called by Musk to determine damages.

Unfortunately he does not have a lot of details YGR is asking for. He doesn’t know how many investments Musk has made (11 to date, according to Pitchbook), or how many were successful. He’s getting some pretty tough questioning from YGR in the direct exam. Among the things she’d asked, he didn’t know how many startups fail in Silicon Valley, or the success rate for assorted VC firms.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
OpenClaw now works better with OpenAI models and Codex.

As part of a new release, “your ChatGPT subscription can now power an OpenClaw agent that feels much closer to the model it is built on,” OpenAI’s Nik Pash says in a blog post.

The OpenClaw team has also been working “really hard on performance, reliability, security, and stability,” according to OpenClaw founder (and OpenAI employee) Peter Steinberger.

Musk v. Altman accomplished nothing but airing dirty laundry

The trial felt less like the fate of OpenAI and more like a window into petty grievances.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“I told you in my opening statement you wouldn’t hear very much from Microsoft, and you haven’t.”

God bless. We are in the Microsoft closing statements. “Microsoft never found a single page of a single document” that referenced Musk’s alleged restrictions on his donations during the due diligence process.