• OpenAI released GPT-5 on Thursday, the latest AI model powering ChatGPT.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it a "significant step" on the path to AGI.
• OpenAI said GPT-5 is faster and multimodal, and will be free for all users.

After weeks of relentless hype, GPT-5 is finally here.

OpenAI officially released the highly anticipated new model on Thursday. It's the latest version of ChatGPT, the company's flagship chatbot, and the most widely used AI model on the market.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it a "major upgrade" and "a significant step along the path of AGI" in a conference call with journalists on Wednesday. He said that after using GPT-5, going back to GPT-4 was "miserable."

OpenAI says the model will be available for free for everyone and that users will no longer need to switch between previous models for different tasks. GPT-5 will switch automatically, the company said, depending on the kind of request and its complexity. GPT-5 will be available in standard, mini, and nano versions. Paid users will have higher usage limits.

Altman said GPT-5 was also the company's fastest model yet.

"One of the things I had been pushing the team on was like, 'Hey, we need to make it way, way faster,'" Altman said. "And I now have this experience of like, 'Are you sure you thought enough?'"

The team said GPT-5 will have improved capabilities for vibe coding, the latest craze in Silicon Valley.

OpenAI has been teasing this next iteration of ChatGPT for over a year, but has ramped up the chatter in the last few days and weeks. On Sunday, Altman shared a screenshot of GPT-5 on X, asking the model to recommend the "most thought-provoking" TV show about AI.

In July, Altman said that "GPT-5 is smarter than us in almost every way." Speaking to podcaster Theo Von, Altman said he asked GPT-5 a question he "didn't quite understand" and it "answered it perfectly," making him feel "useless relative to the AI."

The OpenAI CEO also likened GPT-5's development to the Manhattan Project, the US government's effort to build the atomic bomb during World War II, and said that it made him feel nervous.

"There are moments in the history of science, where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know: 'What have we done?'" Altman said.

OpenAI's last notable model launch was GPT-4.5 in February, which Altman described at the time as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person."

The release of GPT-5 has faced several delays, with the timeline shifting from mid-2024 to mid-2025, to August.

During that time, the number of ChatGPT users has continued to grow. In April, Altman said ChatGPT had 500 million weekly active users. OpenAI said on Thursday that ChatGPT is now on track to hit 700 million weekly active users "this week."

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPT-oss, his company's return to releasing an AI language model with open weights.
• The company launched two new "open" models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, on Tuesday.
• Altman had previously said OpenAI would release a "very powerful open-source model."

OpenAI's AI models are getting more open. At least, some of them are.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPT-oss on Tuesday, an "open" family of language models with "open weights" that the CEO said can operate locally on a "high-end laptop" and smartphones.

An AI model with "open weights" is one whose fully trained parameter weights are made publicly downloadable, so anyone can run, inspect, or fine-tune the AI model locally.

"We believe this is the best and most usable open model in the world," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X.

There are two different models: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b. The smaller model is designed to run on "most desktops and laptops, " while the larger model is geared toward higher-end equipment.

Altman said GPT-oss has "strong real-world performance comparable to o4-mini."

Just before OpenAI's announcement, rival Anthropic revealed the Claude Opus 4.1.

Tuesday's announcement was not the long-rumored ChatGPT-5, which could arrive as soon as this week. Instead, the new model is OpenAI's first open-weight language model since the release of GPT-2 in 2019.

"As part of this, we are quite hopeful that this release will enable new kinds of research and the creation of new kinds of products," Altman wrote. "We expect a meaningful uptick in the rate of innovation in our field, and for many more people to do important work than were able to before."

Altman had previously signaled that OpenAI would return to releasing at least some open model, saying that, "We're going to do a very powerful open source model" that was "better than any current open source model out there."

Meta has long published the open weights of its LLAMA AI models.

• I asked ChatGPT's study mode to help me decide if I would buy my first car.
• Study Mode is meant to guide thinking instead of giving users an answer.
• I was surprised that AI helped me examine my feelings and resist the pressure of car ownership.

For months, I've been paralyzed with indecision every time I walk past a car dealership.

It all started earlier this summer when my partner bought his first car — a five-year-old black Ford Fusion — ahead of a move to Indiana for his Ph.D. program.

Since then, we've both been using the car we named Raven, and I've become used to picking up groceries with ease and leaving home 10 minutes before a dinner party starts. But with him leaving in three weeks and taking Raven along for the ride, I've become overwhelmed with confusion every time I ask myself: Should I buy a car?

So I asked ChatGPT.

And not just any ChatGPT: I chose Study Mode, a new iteration that appeared this week in the toolbar as a book icon. OpenAI says it "helps you work through problems step by step instead of just getting an answer." It can also quiz its users and prompt them to explain their reasoning.

I did not have high hopes, having witnessed many disastrous ChatGPT-generated essays that friends in academia have had to grade. Still, the Study Mode asked me enough well-rounded questions to help me make the unexpected decision to remain car-free.

What I knew before turning to ChatGPT

I live in a co-housing community with a garage to store and charge cars. I also happen to live downtown in a Bay Area city, two blocks away from a Chinatown, where I can find just about any food I need.

Still, having a car would mean not having to frequently turn to Instacart because shopping often overwhelms me. It would mean being able to access our regional park full of redwoods, where there is no cell signal and no chance to Uber back home.

I prefer EVs because they emit less, and I like the peace of mind of knowing that the price of oil, which fluctuates with geopolitics, won't affect my budget as much.

Most of my friends own cars and started sending me their hot takes. I started watching Instagram reels on car recommendations, until they had fully taken over my "For You" page.

Based on those criteria, I found options like a used Nissan Leaf and a pre-owned Tesla.

A used 2017 Nissan Leaf would only have between 50 and 80 miles of range per charge, but it could cost as little as $7,000, not including taxes. Teslas are a more expensive option, but they do have decent range and technologies that compensate for my lack of skills, plus many people are looking to sell.

In my head, I felt like I spent plenty on rides and deliveries to match the convenience a car could provide.

Fortunately, ChatGPT Study Mode explained to me that not only was I wrong, but there was so much more to consider.

Study Mode asked me surprising questions and taught me new concepts

Study Mode started by asking me what level of studies I'm at, to which I explained that I have already gone through grad school, but have other pressing life problems.

I then gave a general description of my circumstances and asked whether I should buy a car.

The AI commended me for making a "thoughtful, not impulsive" decision and explained the concept of being "car poor," meaning buying a fancier car than necessary or having monthly payments cut into other life expenses.

Since I mentioned grocery deliveries and Uber trips, Study Mode then prompted me to think about how many times I use these services a week. I get grocery deliveries about three times a month, plus about two Uber trips and two takeout deliveries a week.

Study Mode crunched the numbers for me. The conveniences I see as indulgences actually cost me around $3,000 a year, but a car would cost me between $6,000 and $8,000 a year, not including the down payment I would need to buy the car.

"Are the extra ~$3,000 — $4,000 per year worth the added freedom and independence? Do you feel anxious or limited without a car?" Study Mode asked.

In bullet points, it asked me about factors I hadn't really thought about before, such as whether I like to go out often, if I enjoy driving, and if I have family who lives far away. It also asked me if I wanted to see a cost breakdown of whether it would be worth it to live further from downtown to lower housing costs, and own a car instead.

As an introvert with no family in this country who mostly spends her weekends with her cat and her next craft project, an answer was beginning to emerge.

But I pushed Study Mode further by asking about the benefits of an EV and if it would actually save me money. The AI gave me a cost breakdown that compared a Chevy Bolt to a fully gas-powered Toyota Corolla, and while the former obviously emits less, it gives me only a marginal amount of savings.

Based on my own investigation, the cost difference between the two cars appears accurate, but the AI vastly undercounts the cost of insuring both types of vehicles by more than 50%. A quote on Geico for a 2022 Chevy Bolt and a Toyota Corolla made the same year would both amount to more than $450 a month in premiums.

As alternatives to an EV, the AI asked me to consider if carpooling with friends and renting cars when I truly need them would be better options for my wallet and for the environment.

It also said buying a three-year-old car is optimal because that is when depreciation slows down and before maintenance costs start to rise.

Study Mode said the bottom line was that if I really, really, still wanted a car, it would suggest a 2022 Chevy Bolt.

Still, I think I'll pass, because to answer one of the AI's previous questions: no, I don't enjoy driving. I will save myself the fear of freeways and the panic of not being able to parallel park, and continue my car-free life.

My next question to ChatGPT will be what kind of bike I should get.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• People have been using ChatGPT and other AI tools to "manifest" their ideal lives.
• My colleague reported on this late last year, and I keep seeing the trend on TikTok still today.
• So I thought about it: Should I give in and join the AI manifesters and visualize my dream life?

It's a TikTok trend that's been going on for some time now — people using ChatGPT and other AI tools to "manifest" their dream lives.

So far, I've avoided it, but when one of my editors noticed it trending again, I had to at least consider it: Am I the type of person who'd manifest? And then use AI to show me what my ideal life would look like?

My colleague Ana Altchek noticed the trend back in September. "Users are sharing how AI has helped them enhance their traditional manifestation practices, such as visualizations, vision boards, positive affirmations, mantras, and rewiring negative beliefs," she reported at the time.

ChatGPT shows your dream life

I decided to investigate for myself, and I found that people essentially prompt AI to create a story about their dream life, based on their goals.

Let's say your goals were to be rich, have flawless skin, snag a hunky husband and two kids, and live in a villa in Italy where you garden tomatoes. Enter those goals — manifest them, if you will — and it would whip up a story for you.

Then, you could use it to create an action plan to actually get there.

I tried this out myself, asking ChatGPT to tell me a story about a day in my life in that Italian villa. I can't deny it delivered an appealing tale:

The sun slipped gently over the Tuscan hills, casting gold across the rolling vineyards and awakening Villa Rosabella, your sun-washed estate tucked among olive trees and cypress-lined roads. The sheets were linen, cool and crisp, and the smell of blooming jasmine drifted in through open French doors. You stretched, not a wrinkle on your face, your skin dewy and flawless, like you'd just walked out of a spa in Capri (because you had — last weekend).

But when I asked it to give me steps to achieve this dream life, things got a little wonky. Although it had some decent practical advice about how to achieve flawless skin ("get a consultation with a top dermatologist,") things got slightly more complicated when it came to the "becoming rich" part of the dream. It suggested things like, "Scale income to $500K+ annual revenue," which ... OK, sure?

To be fair, had I given it slightly more specific goals, it might have come up with a better plan. But I need to admit my bias here: I'm not really into the idea of manifesting. I'm happy for anyone who finds this useful, but it's just not for me.

A while back, I DM'ed some of the people I'd seen talking about this life hack on social media. A few of them told me they really did believe in the power of manifestation — and had clear life goals in mind. (I realized that these women were younger than I am, just starting out in their adult lives. Whereas I'm old enough that my only life goal is just to ride this thing out.)

Manifesting on video

There's also a new twist to the AI manifestations: video. The New York Times reported last week that people are using tools like Runway, Google's Veo 3, or a tool called Freepik to enter a real image of themselves that's then used to illustrate a real (fake) life. For example, I could upload a picture of myself, and then have AI create a video of me sauntering around my Tuscan tomato grove.

I wanted to give it a try, so I tried to use Freepik, which one of the women interviewed by the Times used. But there was a catch: Freepik required a paid account to create video— and there's no way I'm going to scale my income to $500,000 if I'm throwing it all away on AI tools, so I declined.

Personally, I don't think I want to see a video of myself in a dream life, anyway.

I don't think it would make me feel bad per se — or jealous of my dream AI self. And I'm not afraid that the AI version of me might come to life and murder and replace me. I simply do not wish to engage with such content. It just does not appeal to me at all.

Perhaps I lack a growth mindset — the desire to truly improve my life. Perhaps I should be more open to AI manifesting! But also, I am happy to just use my imagination, and tend the one scraggly cherry tomato plant in my yard.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
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Tara Viswanathan, cofounder of AI-powered construction startup Unlimited Industries, recently put OpenAI's agentic capabilities to the test and was impressed by the results.

In a post on X, Viswanathan described how she used ChatGPT (Pro version) to find an Airbnb for an October event. This was her prompt:

"I want to find an Airbnb for [event] in [city / neighborhood] in October this year. I want it for at least that Wednesday through ideally the next Monday. And I want a super nice modern spot that is ideally walkable to the event. Tell me about the area nearby. And ideally it's walkable to coffee shops and things like that too. And I want it to have at least four bedrooms."

She also helped ChatGPT do preparatory work by getting the chatbot to absorb information about her preferences upfront.

"What are some core things that you need to know about me so that you can execute on more complicated tasks accurately?," she wrote to ChatGPT. "Different types of preferences or styles, things like that. Give me a list of questions that I can answer so you can remember. And give me multiple choice answers to make it easy for me."

That resulted in Viswanathan sharing likes and dislikes on topics such as food/meals, hotels, travel, and communication, helping the ChatGPT agent conduct more bespoke research on her behalf.

The AI delivered a spot-on recommendation within about 10 minutes, versus more than an hour if she'd done this online research herself.

"I'm very picky about where I stay," she wrote. "The benefit is less about the time savings and more about the peace of mind knowing it's going to handle it. Insane."

Some travelers love organizing trips more than actually going on them. For everyone else, Viswanathan's experiment offers a compelling glimpse of the future: A proactive AI concierge that knows you well enough to get travel recommendations right the first time.

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• OpenAI partners with Instructure to integrate AI into classroom instruction.
• Instructure's Canvas app will use AI to enhance teaching and student engagement.
• AI tools will assist in creating assignments, assessing students, and managing admin tasks.

When ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2023, students frequently used the AI chatbot to cheat on homework assignments. Two years later, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is taking a more official role in education.

On Wednesday, OpenAI and edtech company Instructure announced a partnership that brings generative AI into the heart of classroom instruction.

Instructure is the company behind Canvas, a learning app that's used by thousands of high schools and many colleges. If you're a parent, like me, you've probably seen your kids checking for homework assignments and grades in this app on their phones.

Going forward, AI models will be embedded within Canvas to help teachers create new types of classes, assess student performance in new ways, and take some of the drudgery out of administrative tasks.

For students, this provides a way to use AI for school work without worrying about being accused of cheating, according to Melissa Loble, chief academic officer at Instructure.

"Students actually do want to learn something, but they want it to be meaningful and applicable to their lives," she added in an interview. "What this does is it allows them to use AI in a class in an interesting way to help them be more engaged and learn more."

The edtech market is crowded, and many players are integrating generative AI into workflows. Last year, Khan Academy, a pioneering online education provider, launched Khanmingo, an AI powered assistant for teachers and students that uses OpenAI technology.

The LLM-enabled assignment

At the center of the Canvas transformation is a new kind of assignment. Instructure calls it the LLM-Enabled Assignment. This tool allows educators to design interactive, chat-based experiences inside Canvas using OpenAI's large language models, or LLMs.

Teachers can describe their targeted learning goals and desired skills in plain language, and the platform will help craft an intelligent conversation tailored to each student's needs.

"With Instructure's global reach with OpenAI's advanced AI models, we'll give educators a tool to deliver richer, more personalized, and more connected learning experiences for students, and also help them reclaim time for the human side of teaching," said Leah Belsky, VP of Education at OpenAI.

Instructure and OpenAI are aiming for a learning experience that better fits how students interact with technology these days — one that mirrors conversations with ChatGPT, but grounded in academic rigor.

For instance, a teacher could conjure up an AI chatbot in the form of John Maynard Keynes, powered by OpenAI GPT models. Students can chat with this AI economics avatar and ask questions such as what might happen if more supply is added to a particular market.

AI in student assessment

As students work through these AI-powered experiences and prompts, their conversations are compared with the teacher's defined objectives and funneled back into the Gradebook, offering real-time insights into student understanding. This gives educators more insight to evaluate the learning process, rather than just students' final answers.

In Canvas, the Gradebook is a centralized tool that helps instructors track, manage, and assess student performance across assignments, quizzes, discussions, and other activities within a course.

Having OpenAI models involved in the assessment process may raise eyebrows among some educators and parents. However, there will always be a human in the loop, and teachers will have full control over assessments and grades, according to Loble.

Help with scheduling and parent questions

Instructure has also developed an AI agent that helps teachers tackle heavy admin tasks in Canvas. For instance, if Porsche broke her ankle riding her horse and she asks for more time to do homework, her teacher can ask the digital agent to go into the app and bump deadlines for Porsche and all her relevant classes.

This AI agent can even help teachers respond to parent questions. Why did Porsche get a B on her economics test? Her parents might want to know at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. The Canvas agent can summarize parent questions like these for teachers, potentially spotting similarities and trends within the messages. The teacher can then ask the agent to write a response to the relevant parents.

Again, a human is always in the loop: In this case, the teacher would check the agent's message and edit or re-write it before sending.

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• I'm a teacher who started experimenting with ChatGPT.
• AI helps me create study guides, bar graphs, and quizzes.
• The technology will never eliminate all of my duties, but it's made me a more efficient teacher.

I was anxious the first time I dabbled in ChatGPT. That's probably an understatement. I actually feared that someone was watching over me, lurking in cyberspace, waiting to sound alarm bells when I typed a certain phrase or combination of words into the blank search bar.

I'm a journalist and journalism educator. I teach kids about sourcing and how to avoid plagiarizing material. In my media ethics class, I ask them to sign a contract saying they won't use other people's material.

So what the heck was I doing playing with AI? And what if I actually liked it?

Spoiler alert: I did, and it's kind of awesome.

ChatGPT has become helpful for me

Teachers have focused so much on how our students might use AI to cheat that we may have forgotten how it can help us in the classroom and at home.

I'm using AI (specifically ChatGPT) in practical, everyday ways.

I recently completed a 16-week intensive ELA and math tutoring program in our local school district. The material I was given for the program didn't work well for my kids, so I ran it through ChatGPT to make it more digestible.

With AI, I can customize my lessons — quickly. Tens and ones review? No problem. Bar graph with ice cream flavors? Done. First grade fractions? Been there, done that, too. I've even started playing around with Bingo designs for fun.

I'm also using AI to play teacher at home. When my 6th grader needs to review states of matter or the history of ancient China, we turn to AI together. ChatGPT whips up multiple-choice quizzes (with answer keys) faster than I can make dinner. The same thing goes for studying India's monsoon season. Once, I even asked AI to create a quiz on how to spot fake news.

I recently looked back on my ChatGPT history and realized how much I had used AI to generate study guides, like the one I made for "The Outsiders," by S.E. Hinton. My son got an A on that quiz.

I don't think AI will ever replace me

As much as I've come to rely on AI, I've learned that it isn't going to solve all my classroom conundrums.

For example, it won't comfort a crying student because he or she did poorly on a test and fears her parents will ground her. AI isn't going to help me decide when a student is sick enough to visit the school nurse. It's not going to help me figure out why a student understands one concept of math but can't grasp another.

But given all the complexities and challenges of being an educator right now, I'll take the help, even if it means double-checking all of the facts.

I'm leaning into AI, but cautiously

I still feel a little guilty when I ask AI to check a sentence's grammar or to eliminate redundancies in my writing. I'm not sure if it's because I asked for help or because the work is often great.

Still, ChatGPT has made me more efficient as a teacher. I can easily whip up study guides that benefit my students and tailor lesson plans to them. All of this frees up time for me to connect with my students more easily and focus on other tasks.

I'm glad I took a leap of faith, and I plan on exploring AI as it continues to grow.

• The "Godfather of AI" outlined why he thinks Google moved slower on rolling out its chatbots.
• Geoffrey Hinton, who spent more than a decade at Google, said reputational considerations were key.
• Hinton, who focuses on AI safety, said he couldn't comment on if Sam Altman has a "good moral compass."

When it comes to winning the AI race, the "Godfather of AI" thinks there's an advantage in having nothing to lose.

On an episode of the "Diary of a CEO" podcast that aired June 16, Geoffrey Hinton laid out what he sees as a key difference between how OpenAI and Google, his former employer, dealt with AI safety.

"When they had these big chatbots, they didn't release them, possibly because they were worried about their reputation," Hinton said of Google. "They had a very good reputation, and they didn't want to damage it."

Google released Bard, its AI chatbot, in March of 2023, before later incorporating it into its larger suite of large language models called Gemini. The company was playing catch-up, though, since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022.

Hinton, who earned his nickname for his pioneering work on neural networks, laid out a key reason that OpenAI could move faster on the podcast episode: "OpenAI didn't have a reputation, and so they could afford to take the gamble."

Talking at an all-hands meeting shortly after ChatGPT came out, Google's then-head of AI said the company didn't plan to immediately release a chatbot because of "reputational risk," adding that it needed to make choices "more conservatively than a small startup," CNBC reported at the time.

The company's AI boss, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, said in February of this year that AI poses potential long-term risks, and that agentic systems could get "out of control." He advocated having a governing body that regulates AI projects.

Gemini has made some high-profile mistakes since its launch, and showed bias in its written responses and image-generating feature. Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the controversy in a memo to staff last year, saying the company "got it wrong" and pledging to make changes.

The "Godfather" saw Google's early chatbot decision-making from the inside — he spent more than a decade at the company before quitting to talk more freely about what he describes as the dangers of AI. On Monday's podcast episode, though, Hinton said he didn't face internal pressure to stay silent.

"Google encouraged me to stay and work on AI safety, and said I could do whatever I liked on AI safety," he said. "You kind of censor yourself. If you work for a big company, you don't feel right saying things that will damage the big company."

Overall, Hinton said he thinks Google "actually behaved very responsibly."

Hinton couldn't be as sure about OpenAI, though he has never worked at the company. When asked whether the company's CEO, Sam Altman, has a "good moral compass" earlier in the episode, he said, "We'll see." He added that he doesn't know Altman personally, so he didn't want to comment further.

OpenAI has faced criticism in recent months for approaching safety differently than in the past. In a recent blog post, the company said it would only change its safety requirements after making sure it wouldn't "meaningfully increase the overall risk of severe harm." Its focus areas for safety now include cybersecurity, chemical threats, and AI's power to improve independently.

Altman defended OpenAI's approach to safety in an interview at TED2025 in April, saying that the company's preparedness framework outlines "where we think the most important danger moments are." Altman also acknowledged in the interview that OpenAI has loosened some restrictions on its model's behavior based on user feedback about censorship.

The earlier competition between OpenAI and Google to release initial chatbots was fierce, and the AI talent race is only heating up. Documents reviewed by Business Insider reveal that Google relied on ChatGPT in 2023 — during its attempts to catch up to ChatGPT.

Representatives for Google and OpenAI did not respond to BI's request for comment.

• After taking a career break, I had to jump back into the job market.
• I used ChatGPT to find open roles, write my résumé and cover letter, and prepare for interviews.
• I landed my dream job in AI, making it a full-circle moment.

After a well-deserved career break, I decided it was time to look for a new job. The only problem was that I had last done this 10 years ago, and job hunting was a completely different game then.

In 2025, everything has changed, from how roles are advertised to how candidates are evaluated. LinkedIn isn't just an optional platform anymore. It's seemingly essential. Companies are using automated systems to screen résumés, and social media presence matters more than ever. The landscape has drastically changed, becoming more digital and competitive than ever before.

Facing this entirely new scenario was daunting. The old rules didn't apply, and the anxiety of navigating this new environment quickly set in. I realized I needed help, something or someone, to guide me through these uncharted waters.

I decided to adapt using the very technology shaping the new job market: AI.

Embracing AI to redefine my career path

After years of working as a lawyer, embracing AI felt like venturing into foreign territory, but it also felt exciting. I'd read countless stories about people using AI for everything from meal planning to writing novels, but I wondered how effective it could be for finding a job.

My first step was to have an in-depth conversation with ChatGPT to help identify exactly what I wanted next in my career. After a much-needed career break, I knew I wanted something that bridged my interests in technology and law, but the specifics were blurry.

Through a lengthy dialogue with the AI, during which we discussed my strengths, interests, and professional goals, I was able to clarify exactly what I was looking for. ChatGPT helped me pinpoint roles that sat neatly at the intersection of legal practice and emerging technologies, creating a tailored shortlist of companies and positions that genuinely excited me.

Leveraging AI for résumés, cover letters, and interviews

Armed with this newfound clarity, it was time to get practical. I turned again to ChatGPT, this time for help with polishing my résumé, crafting standout cover letters, and preparing for interviews.

Starting with my résumé, I fed ChatGPT my old document alongside descriptions of the roles I was targeting. Within minutes, it transformed my résumé into a crisp, impactful summary of my professional achievements. It suggested action-oriented language and quantified outcomes, things I hadn't thought to highlight on my own. My previously bland document suddenly felt dynamic and compelling, accurately reflecting my experience and capabilities.

Next, I tackled the dreaded cover letters. Each application felt like writing a small autobiography, a tedious task I usually procrastinated endlessly on. With ChatGPT, the experience transformed. I provided basic details about the role and why I was interested, and the AI-generated, polished, tailored cover letters genuinely sounded like me, only better. Minor tweaks aside, the AI-driven drafts were ready to send out immediately, saving me countless hours of stress and editing.

Then came mock interviews. ChatGPT proved invaluable here, simulating realistic interview scenarios and offering insightful feedback on my responses. It didn't just spit out generic interview questions. It tailored them specifically to each role, asking about industry trends, hypothetical scenarios, and even personal motivations. The AI coached me through my answers, helping me refine my responses to ensure they were concise, authentic, and impactful.

Landing the ideal job: Full circle with AI

The impact of these preparations was swift and substantial. Within just two months of starting this tech-driven job hunt, I secured a role at a cutting-edge tech company developing AI specifically designed for lawyers. It felt surreal yet perfectly aligned. After all, my journey began and ended with artificial intelligence.

This role wasn't just a paycheck. It was a full-circle moment, merging my long-standing passion for law with my newly sparked enthusiasm for technology.

Would I use AI to job hunt again? Absolutely. In fact, I can't imagine tackling such a stressful process without it. AI didn't just streamline tedious tasks. It empowered me to present myself authentically and strategically in a fiercely competitive market. It took the overwhelm out of job hunting, making the process not only manageable but surprisingly enjoyable.

In a world increasingly defined by technology, leveraging AI in your career search isn't just clever. It's becoming essential.

Whether you're pivoting careers, re-entering the workforce, or just exploring new opportunities, AI could be the ally you never knew you needed. For me, embracing AI was the smartest professional decision I made in years, proving that sometimes the best way to adapt to change is to lean into it fully.

• Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are building a mystery ChatGPT device.
• The interwebs have come alive with gadget guesses, renders, and memes.
• OpenAI is trying to challenge Apple and Google by redefining AI interaction with new hardware.

Let's get something out of the way first: very few people really know what former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are building.

That hasn't stopped the internet from bursting at the seams with wild guesses, gorgeous renders, speculative hot takes, and a healthy dose of meme-fueled imagination.

So, what is this mystery device that Ive is cooking up for OpenAI's ChatGPT? A screenless wearable? A next-gen smart assistant? A pocketable AI oracle? A glorified paperweight?

Here's our roundup of the best guesses — serious, speculative, satirical, and everything in between. Thank you to my Business Insider colleagues for contributing to this Friday's fun.

Serious Guesses: Industry Analyst Weighs In

OK fine. We'll start with some serious ideas.

TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is a credible source in the tech hardware and supply-chain space, especially when it comes to Apple. His take on the Ive-OpenAI gadget is valuable:

• Form Factor: Think small. Maybe iPod Shuffle-sized. Portable, minimal, and delightfully Ive-ish.
• Wearable: One of the use cases includes wearing it around your neck. Shades of sci-fi, Star Trek, or perhaps a Tamagotchi on steroids?
• No Screen: It will have cameras and mics for environmental awareness but no display. The idea is to not add another screen to our lives.
• Companion Device: It will connect to your smartphone or laptop for processing and visual output.
• Production Timeline: Mass production is expected in 2027, giving us plenty of time for more leaks, renders, and conspiracy theories.

Kuo suggested on X that the announcement was timed to shift attention away from Google I/O. OpenAI positioned this as a new hardware-software narrative, riding the trend of "physical AI."

He also referenced a great quote from former Apple fellow Alan Kay: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." That's exactly what Altman and OpenAI are trying to do here.

Clues from Altman and WSJ

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Altman offered OpenAI staff a preview of the devices he's building with Ive:

• The device was described as an AI "companion." Altman wants to ship 100 million of them on day one.
• It will be aware of its surroundings and fit in your pocket or sit on your desk.
• It's not a phone or smart glasses. Ive reportedly wasn't keen on a wearable, though the final design may still flirt with that concept.
• Altman said the device should be the third major object on your desk, alongside a MacBook and iPhone.
• There will be a "family of devices," and Altman even floated the idea of mailing subscribers new ChatGPT-powered computers.

They aim to shift away from screen-based interaction and rethink what AI companionship really means in a day-to-day human context.

Renders, memes, and vibes

The brilliant designer Ben Geskin imagined several cool form factors on X, including this circular disc.

Geskin's ideas blend Apple-grade minimalism with futuristic whimsy, perfectly on brand for Jony Ive.

• Some smart glasses, because of course.
• A dangly dongle, equal parts techie and jewelry.
• Square/rectangular objects with eerie elegance.

Echoing Geskin, another user on X proposed a disc-shaped device, sleek enough to pass as a high-end coaster or futuristic hockey puck. Think of it as an AI desk companion, quietly listening and gently glowing.

One BI colleague mentioned a smart ChatGPT lamp, possibly inspired by "The Sopranos" episode where the FBI bugs Tony's basement. Funny, but not impossible. After all, a lamp fits Altman's desk-friendly criteria.

Another X user joked that the device could resemble those emergency pendants worn by older adults — "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" — but with ChatGPT instead of a nurse. A brutal meme, but it raises a valid point: If the device is meant to be always-on, context-aware, and worn, why not market it to older users, too?

Although, if this is for the olds, should it use Google Gemini instead? Burn!

X user Peter Hu proposed an AI-powered nail clipper. Yes, it's absurd, and no, it doesn't make sense. But the design? Low-key fire.

Here's mocked up a vape pen with a ChatGPT twist. Inhale wisdom, exhale existential dread.

Some of the most surreal concepts look like direct plugs into your skull. There's a "Matrix" or "Severance" vibe here, suggesting a future where ChatGPT lives in your head like a helpful parasite.

This one below is cute!

I asked ChatGPT to take a guess. The answer was not impressive. No wonder OpenAI paid $6.5 billion for Ive's hardware design startup.

This last one is a Silicon Valley insider joke. It's also a warning that it's extremely hard to replace smartphones as the go-to tech gadget. It's a riff on the Humane pin, an AI device that bombed already.

Can OpenAI compete with Apple and Google?

This device matters beyond its shape because of what it represents. Right now, Apple and Google dominate the interface layer of computing through iOS and Android devices. If OpenAI wants to define how people interact with ChatGPT, it needs a hardware beachhead.

Humane's AI pin tried and failed. The Rabbit R1 got roasted. The jury's still out on Meta's Ray-Bans. Can Ive and Altman actually crack the code?

Knowing Ive, we'll probably be surprised no matter what. The real product could be something no one predicted.

The race to define the next major computing interface is officially on. With Ive and Altman teaming up, OpenAI is making a major bet that how we interact with AI is just as important as what AI can do.

When the curtain lifts, and Ive whispers "aluminium" in a design video, jaws will probably drop, and competitors will scramble.

Until then, keep your renders weird, your guesses wild, and your brain tuned in to BI. We'll be here to cover every hilarious, ambitious, and brilliant twist along the way.

See you in 2027.

• Before OpenAI, Altman was well-known in Silicon Valley as the president of Y Combinator.
• The release of ChatGPT in 2022 catapulted Altman to worldwide fame.
• Since then, he's led the charge to make OpenAI the first company to unleash the power of AGI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had an eventful 2024, and 2025 is shaping up to be just as big.

While the 39-year-old entrepreneur has been a household name in Silicon Valley for years now, the rest of the world has gotten to know him more recently through the success of OpenAI's AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which launched in 2022.

So far this year, Altman has tried to transform OpenAI into a for-profit company before backtracking in light of a lawsuit filed by OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, while releasing the company's first "emotionally intelligent" model GPT-4.5, and planning for GPT-5.

Altman also unveiled a new partnership with longtime Apple designer Jony Ive, who, with his design firm LoveFrom, will take creative and design control of OpenAI. OpenAI is also acquiring Ive's hardware startup in a $6.5 billion deal.

This year also marked major milestones in Altman's personal life. Altman, who's married to Oliver Mulherin, announced the birth of his son in February.

In April 2024, Altman was added to Forbes' billionaires list. OpenAI launched GPT-4o — its newest large language model —the following month. In June, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference that the tech giant would partner with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to iPhones.

Before the AI boom, Altman spent years as president of startup accelerator Y Combinator. He also owns stakes in Reddit, a nuclear fusion startup known as Helion, and other companies. In his free time, he races sports cars with his husband and preps for the apocalypse.

Here's a look at Altman's life and career so far.

Altman grew up in St. Louis and he was a computer whiz from a young age.

He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, nonsectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.

 

 

Altman told The New Yorker that having a Mac helped him with his sexuality

"Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."

Altman came out as gay after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality.

"What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor, Madelyn Gray, told The New Yorker. "It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world."

Altman studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out to start an app

The app shared a user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup got $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same batch as Reddit, according to The Business of Business.

Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation

The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.

One of Loopt's cofounders, Nick Sivo, and Altman dated for nine years, but they broke up after they sold the company.

After Loopt, Altman founded a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital, and raised $21 million.

That included a large part of the $5 million he got from Loopt, and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money into YC companies and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.

He told The New Yorker, "You want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts, the company will be hugely underpriced."

In 2014, at the age of 28, Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to succeed him as president of the startup accelerator.

While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup." The next year, at 29, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital.

After he became YC president, he wanted to let more science and engineering startups into each batch.

He chose a fission and a fusion startup for YC because he wanted to start a nuclear-energy company of his own. He invested his own money in both companies and served on their boards.

Mark Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, told The New Yorker, "Under Sam, the level of YC's ambition has gone up 10x."

 

He finds interesting — and expensive — ways to spend his free time.

In April (the same month he made Forbes' billionaire list), Altman was spotted in Napa, California, driving an ultra-rare Swedish supercar. The Koenigsegg Regera is seriously fast, able to go from zero to 250 miles per hour in less than 30 seconds. Only 80 of these cars are known to exist, and they can cost up to $4.65 million. 

He once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.

Separately, he told the founders of the startup Shypmate that, "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war.

"I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."

Altman's mom is a dermatologist and told The New Yorker, "Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He'll call and say he has a headache — and he'll have Googled it, so there's some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."

Altman has a brother, Jack, who is a cofounder and CEO at Lattice, an employee management platform.

Along with their brother Max, the Altmans launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.

In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX at the time.

Their goal for the nonprofit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans.

"We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?" Musk told The New York Times in 2015. "We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity."

Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel.

Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI. He stayed in a chairman role at the accelerator.

At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI planned to make a profit, and he said the "honest answer is we have no idea."

Altman said OpenAI had "never made any revenue" and that it had "no current plans to make revenue." 

"We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said at the time, according to TechCrunch.

Altman became CEO of OpenAI in May 2019 after it turned away from being a nonprofit company into a "capped profit" corporation.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said on its blog. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019.

Altman flew to Seattle to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he demonstrated OpenAI's AI models for him, The Wall Street Journal reported. The pair announced their business partnership on LinkedIn.

Current and former insiders at OpenAI told Fortune that after Altman took over as CEO, and after the investment from Microsoft, the company started focusing more on developing natural language processing.

Altman and OpenAI's former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities. 

In 2021, Altman and cofounders Alex Blania and Max Novendstern launched a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin.

The company, now just called World, aims to give everyone in the world access to crypto by scanning their iris with an orb. In January, World said it had reached 1 million people and has onboarded over 150,000 first-time crypto users.

Under Altman's tenure as CEO, OpenAI released popular generative AI tools to the public, including DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.

After ChatGPT was released on November 30, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days.

ChatGPT was made public so OpenAI could use feedback from users to improve the bot.

A few days after its launch, Altman said that it "is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness." Altman posted that ChatGPT was "great" for "fun creative inspiration," but "not such a good idea" to look up facts.

ChatGPT then launched a paid version of ChatGPT called "ChatGPT Professional" to give better access to the bot. In December, Altman posted that OpenAI "will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering."

ChatGPT now has multiple models at different price levels.

In January 2023, Microsoft announced it was making another "multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI.

The value of Microsoft's investment was worth $10 billion. Before Microsoft's investment, other venture capitalists wanted to buy shares from OpenAI employees in a tender offer that valued the company at around $29 billion.

Altman is still interested in nuclear fusion and invested $375 million in Helion Energy in 2022.

"Helion is more than an investment to me," Altman told TechCrunch. "It's the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I'm just super excited about what's going to happen there."

He told TechCrunch that he's "happy there's a fusion race," to build a low-cost fusion energy system that can eventually power the Earth.

OpenAI launched its subscription plan for ChatGPT Plus in 2023.

People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get benefits such as access to the app even when traffic is high, faster responses from the bot, and first access to new features and ChatGPT improvements.

Altman wrote that OpenAI's mission is to make sure AGI "benefits all of humanity."

"If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility," Altman wrote on OpenAI's blog.

Despite its potential, Altman said artificial general intelligence comes with "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption." But instead of stopping its development, Altman said "society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right."

Altman went on to share the principles that OpenAI "care about most," including "the benefits of, access to, and governance of AGI to be widely and fairly shared."

Altman said he and OpenAI are "a little bit scared" of AI's potential.

In an interview with ABC News, Altman said he thinks "people should be happy that we're a little bit scared" of generative AI systems as they develop.

Altman said he doesn't think AI systems should only be developed in a lab.

"You've got to get these products out into the world and make contact with reality, make our mistakes while the stakes are low," he said.

In April 2023, OpenAI announced the option to turn off chat history in ChatGPT.

In a blog post, the company said it hoped the option to turn off chat history "provides an easier way to manage your data than our existing opt-out process."

When a user turns off their chat history, new conversations will be kept for 30 days for OpenAI to review them for abuse, then are permanently deleted.

In his first appearance before Congress, Altman told a Senate panel there should be a government agency to grant licenses to companies working on advanced AI.

Altman told lawmakers there should be an agency that grants licenses for companies that are working on AI models "above a certain scale of capabilities." He also said the agency should be able to revoke licenses from companies that don't follow safety rules.

"I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," Altman said. "And we want to be vocal about that, we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

OpenAI launched a ChatGPT app for iPhones and Android users in 2023.

The app, which is free, can answer text-based and spoken questions using Whisper, another OpenAI product that is a speech-recognition model. Users who have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus can also access it through the app.

Altman met with leaders in Europe to discuss AI regulations and said OpenAI has "no plans to leave" the EU.

At the start of his trip, Altman told reporters in London that he was concerned about the EU's proposed AI Act, which focuses on regulating AI and protecting Europeans from AI risks.

"The details really matter," Altman said, according to the Financial Times. "We will try to comply, but if we can't comply, we will cease operating."

However, he shared on X later in the week that OpenAI is "excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave."

In an October 2023 interview, Altman expressed "deep misgivings" about people befriending AI.

Altman made it clear that he doesn't believe humans should try to be friends with AI in an interview during The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event.

"I personally really have deep misgivings about this vision of the future where everyone is super close to AI friends, and not more so with their human friends," Altman said.

OpenAI shocked tech fans by announcing that Altman would no longer be the company's CEO.

In November, the OpenAI board of directors announced that Altman would be stepping down from his role as CEO and leaving the board, "effective immediately."

In a blog post, the board said it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," and added that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications."

"We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," a statement from OpenAI's board says. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

Altman issued his own statement via a post on X.

"i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people," Altman wrote.

He added: "will have more to say about what's next later."

Days after the ouster, Altman returned as CEO.

After a chaotic weekend, Altman and OpenAI announced that he would return to the tech company as CEO.

"We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo," the company wrote on X.

In January 2024, Altman confirmed he had married his partner Oliver Mulherin.

Altman married his partner Mulherin in January 2024.

An attendee of the wedding confirmed to Business Insider that the pictures the couple shared weren't AI-generated. His husband is an Australian software engineer who previously worked at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

OpenAI launched its text-to-video model Sora.

In February 2024, OpenAI unveiled Sora to the public. The program — named after the Japanese word for "sky" — created up to one-minute-long videos from text prompts. 

"We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," OpenAI wrote in Sora's announcement.

Altman and his husband signed the Giving Pledge in 2024.

A few weeks after Forbes declared Altman a billionaire, he and his partner signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of their fortune.

"We would not be making this pledge if it weren't for the hard work, brilliance, generosity, and dedication to improve the world of many people that built the scaffolding of society that let us get here," the pledge letter read.

They continued: "There is nothing we can do except feel immense gratitude and commit to pay it forward, and do what we can to build the scaffolding up a little higher."

OpenAI introduces GPT-4o.

During its "Spring Update" on May 13, 2024, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, an updated version of its large language model that powers ChatGPT. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati made the announcement, and Altman didn't make an appearance despite actively promoting the event on X. 

Altman might've been absent from the presentation, but the demonstrations of ChatGPT's voice and video capabilities created buzz online. It also led to Altman and his company being called out by actor Scarlett Johansson, who alleged that the OpenAI chatbot Sky's voice sounded "eerily similar" to her own after she declined a partnership.

Altman's post on X referencing a movie in which Johansson voices someone's virtual girlfriend was quickly called into question, and the company soon said that it would not move forward with the voice heard in the demo.

Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

After much debate about how it would enter the AI arms race, Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it would partner with OpenAI to close the gap between it and its rivals.

Although Bloomberg reported that Apple isn't paying OpenAI in cash, the tech titan's solid installed base of over two billion users means more people may use ChatGPT if it comes integrated with Siri. According to the presentation, Siri will be able to handle more complex requests with help from ChatGPT.

Altman was spotted attending WWDC the day the partnership was announced and speaking to high-ranking Apple employees ahead of the keynote. 

Altman might finally get equity as OpenAI considers restructuring.

Altman confirmed reports that OpenAI was planning a corporate restructuring during a talk at Italian Tech Week in September 2024. 

"Our board has been thinking about that for almost a year, independently, as we think about what it takes to get to our next stage," Altman said. "I think this is just about people being ready for new chapters of their lives and a new generation of leadership."

As part of those changes, Altman might finally get equity in OpenAI, which is now worth about $157 billion after it closed its most recent, $6.6 billion funding round. 

In October 2024, Altman weighed in on how close he is to achieving OpenAI's mission.

At OpenAI's developer conference, Dev Day, Altman said o1, OpenAI's latest set of AI models, which it says has "reasoning" abilities, represented a breakthrough toward artificial general intelligence. 

While Altman said he believes AGI — a still hypothetical form of AI that can solve any task a human can — is still a ways away, there will be "very steep" progress over the next two years.

OpenAI announced in January that it'd be involved in a $500 billion project called Stargate.

On January 21, Altman joined Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, President Donald Trump, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to announce a partnership to fund a $500 billion investment in US AI. The companies would form Stargate, a project that seeks to build US AI infrastructure and create jobs.

"Together these world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate," Trump said, adding: "Put that name down in your books, because I think you're going to hear a lot about it."

He declined a $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI from a group led by Elon Musk.

Though the pair founded OpenAI together, Altman's relationship with Musk has become increasingly tense over the years. Musk offered to run OpenAI, but his proposal was rejected, Semafor reported in 2023. He departed OpenAI in 2018 and went on to start xAI.

Since then, they've had heated exchanges, shared words of appreciation, and entered a legal battle. Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in March 2024, alleging the company violated its founding principles.

In an August 2024 lawsuit, Musk claimed he was "deceived" into cofounding OpenAI.

The most recent development in their feud is a $97.4 billion bid to buy the AI company by a group led by Musk. Altman declined, telling Sky News reporters at an AI summit in Paris, "The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

He announced the birth of his first child in February.

welcome to the world, little guy!

he came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile. he is doing well and it’s really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him.

i have never felt such love. pic.twitter.com/wFF2FkKiMU

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 22, 2025

On February 22, Altman announced the birth of his son on social media. Altman said the newborn will be in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, which offers medical treatment after birth, "for awhile."

"i have never felt such love," Altman said in his post.

Days later, OpenAI released GPT-4.5.

Altman introduced the new model in a post on X, where he described it as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person." He added that the model will be "giant" and "expensive," and Altman said it offers a "different kind of intelligence and there's a magic to it."

OpenAI released GPT-4.5 to pro tier users who pay $200 a month and developers in the API with plans to offer it to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Edu users the following week.

OpenAI backtracks on its plans to go for-profit

In a blog post on May 5, OpenAI said it "was founded as a nonprofit, and is today overseen and controlled by that nonprofit. Going forward, it will continue to be overseen and controlled by that nonprofit."

It added that the "for-profit LLC, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)—a purpose-driven company structure that has to consider the interests of both shareholders and the mission."

OpenAI also said that the nonprofit will continue to control the PBC and remain its largest shareholder. The new PBC will maintain OpenAI's same mission.

OpenAI acquires the startup io from ex-Apple designer Jony Ive in a $6.5 billion deal.

Altman announced on May 21 that OpenAI was buying a hardware startup called io from Jony Ive, the former Apple exec who led the design of the iPhone and other iconic products. The deal is valued at nearly $6.5 billion, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

Altman also noted that Ive, and his design firm LoveFrom, would be taking control of creative and design at OpenAI — a partnership that has been two years in the making.

• Google stock tumbled after Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue said Safari searches had dropped.
• A filing reveals another reason Google watchers worry about search: slowed growth in paid clicks.
• Some analysts are split over whether Google's Search empire is under threat.

Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue set alarm bells ringing on Wednesday after dropping a bombshell at Google's antitrust trial: Google searches through Safari dropped in April for the first time ever.

While his comments triggered a frenzied sell-off in Google stock, it might not be the only reason the company's watchers should be concerned about Google's ability to keep full control over the search market.

A little-noticed number in Google's latest financial disclosure may be the realest sign yet that investors have reason to worry.

After reporting blockbuster Q1 earnings last month, Google revealed in a 10-Q filing with the SEC that paid clicks for the quarter grew 2%, down from 5% growth in the same quarter a year ago. That's the slowest growth rate since the company began reporting the metric.

Paid clicks are exactly what they sound like: people click on ads across Google Search and other services such as Google Play and Gmail. Each click translates to money in Google's pocket.

Why those paid clicks are down, exactly, Google hasn't said.

"It's possible macro played a role, or searches with AI overviews delivered better results, requiring fewer 'paid clicks' to get to conversion," Bernstein analysts wrote in a note published Wednesday. "But mostly, it's a worrying KPI."

The analysts said they believe the timing of the dip, combined with Cue's comments and surging numbers of ChatGPT and Meta AI users, suggests that Google's control of the search market may be lower than previously believed.

"Combined, we estimate Google's search share is closer to 65-70% vs. the 90% we often hear," they wrote.

Google declined to comment.

Google's slice of pie

Google insists that it's seeing more searches than ever.

Since the 2000s, the company has managed to harvest vast amounts of searches by paying Apple a fee to make its search engine the default on Apple's Safari web browser. As recently as 2022, Google had paid Apple at least $20 billion —  a massive fee that signals how much value Google sees in having Apple users turn to its search engine for all their queries.

It maintains that this partnership continues to drive growth in searches. Cue's comments were provocative enough to prompt the search giant to issue a public statement stating that it continues to see "overall query growth" in Search, including an increase in total queries coming from Apple.

There's little doubt among industry watchers that the overall search pie is growing — though figures from research firm Statcounter suggest Google's control of the global search has fallen slightly. The big question is whether Google's slice of that pie is shrinking relative to rivals.

According to Statcounter, Google's share of global search traffic fell to 89.71% in March 2025, down from about 91% in March 2024 and about 93% in March 2023.

Meanwhile, competing search products are growing. In April, OpenAI said that around 10% of the world uses ChatGPT, which would be at least 800 million users. Meta also said that about 1 billion people use AI across its various products.

The search market expands with AI as chatbots and generative tools expand the definition of search. Google could reap the rewards here, though this also creates an opening for competitors charging as fast as possible to stay ahead of the search giant.

Bernstein analysts estimated that generative AI queries that run through chatbots such as ChatGPT are reaching volumes close to 15% of the queries processed by Google and other traditional search engines.

Analysts are split

Other analysts are divided on just how much of a threat Google's search business faces.

For instance, longtime Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo took to X on Wednesday to explain why he felt it was a mistake to think generative AI would not affect Google's advertising business.

He said that despite the "continued growth of Google's advertising business," the company hasn't had much competition yet.

"GenAI service providers have not launched advertising businesses, so Google Ads remains the best choice for online advertisers," Kuo wrote.

Kuo likened Google's situation to the one Yahoo faced during the 2000s. The company's advertising business, launched in 1995, only started declining in 2008, despite newfound competition from Google's AdWords business arriving back in 2000.

Analysts at investment bank Jefferies have a different view. In a research note on Wednesday, the analysts had a particular word to describe the roughly $155 billion sell-off in Google's stock following Cue's comments: "overblown."

While they acknowledged that Google's AI-powered "Overviews" feature may act as a headwind right now as it is resulting in "fewer searches," they said Google will "be able to ramp monetization" of its AI summary feature over the long run.

They also don't see a scenario where Apple shifts away from Google and causes as much harm as investors might think.

"While Safari is significant, it does not represent the entirety of search activity; iOS accounts for 18% of operating systems, and Safari holds 17% of the browser market share compared to Chrome's 66%," the analysts wrote.

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• Google stock tumbled Wednesday after Apple's executive Eddy Cue said AI rivals were cutting into the search giant.
• Google responded by saying that's not the case.
• It's possible that both arguments are correct. The stakes are very high.

Is Google screwed?

That's the $2 trillion question the tech world is trying to understand following Wednesday's blockbuster news: A top Apple executive said search queries on the company's Safari browser were declining because people were using AI engines like ChatGPT instead.

Investors immediately acted as if Google's astonishing run at the top of the tech heap was over, and slashed the company's stock by more than 8%.

But a day later, Google's stock was climbing back up a bit, and there's a healthy debate about what Cue's statement means — as well as why he said it.

Spoiler: I'm not going to solve this one today. But let's at least look at the argument.

The most obvious way to view Cue's comments was the way Wall Street did: that Google search dominance was being eroded by AI competitors.

After all, fear of being usurped by AI is what pushed Google to fast-track its own AI efforts, even when some of those efforts created embarrassing results.

But later on Wednesday, Google put out a statement that basically said Cue was wrong, without actually saying that out loud. Instead, the company said it was continuing to see increasing searches, and "that includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms."

So that looks like two of the world's most powerful and valuable companies are disagreeing over basic, knowable facts.

But people who pay attention to this stuff are focusing on three key words in Google's statement: "total," "devices," and "platforms." And the absence of another word: "Safari."

And that's leading them to translate Google's statement this way: "Maybe Apple really is seeing fewer searches on Safari, the default web browser on iPhones. But you can use Google in other ways on iPhones — namely, via the Google app, but also via Google's own Chrome browser. And people are using those more — enough to counter any decline elsewhere."

Assuming that this translation is accurate, that should reassure Google and its boosters a bit, though not completely: Cue said the searches on Safari were down for the first time ever, and that's not the kind of signal you can just wave away.

And even if Safari Google searchers are really moving to things like the Google app instead, that also underlines the fact that people who used to just type something into their iPhone browser know now they can get results other ways. And there's no reason they couldn't also be searching on Google competitors like ChatGPT.

A Google rep declined to comment; Apple hasn't responded to my request for comment.

Google investors, by the way, don't seem 100% convinced by Google's statement: The stock is up 3% on Thursday, which means Google is still worth 5% less than it was Wednesday morning, when Cue started testifying in the US vs. Google antitrust trial.

Which brings us to the second question Google and Apple watchers are speculating about: Why did Cue say what he said in court, after all?

I'm an Occam's razor guy, so my first take was that Cue answered the questions he was asked in court.

But there's also a 4D chess argument, put forth by folks like MoffettNathanson's analyst Michael Nathanson. It goes like this: Cue has an incentive to portray Google as a wounded animal.

That's because Google pays Apple at least $20 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on Safari (that's the reason Cue has insight into Google's search activity), and a federal judge has already declared that Google has an illegal monopoly in search.

And one of the remedies the judge could push for would be to prevent Google from paying Apple for that valuable real estate — which would mean Apple could lose all of that high-margin revenue.

So, the theory goes, convincing the judge that Google no longer has a stranglehold on search, because of AI competition, might allow those payments to keep flowing after all.

That theory also helps explain Google's muted response on Wednesday night, where the company tried to walk the line between tooting its own horn (which bucks up investors but could damage its legal argument) and acknowledging that it has real competition (which could help Google in court but hurt it in the market).

Which brings us back to where we started: Is Google really starting to lose out to the ChatGPTs of the world, and entering a permanent decline, just like pay-TV networks a decade ago? Or is it holding its own despite the competition? Depending on where you're asking the question, Google might give you a different answer.

Correction: May 8, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated which company the Safari browser belongs to. It's Apple, not Google.