OpenAI released initial estimates about the share of users who may be experiencing symptoms like delusional thinking, mania, or suicidal ideation, and says it has tweaked GPT-5 to respond more effectively. For the first time ever, OpenAI has released a rough estimate of how many ChatGPT users globally may show signs of having a severe mental health crisis in a typical week. The company said Monday that it worked with experts around the world to make updates to the chatbot so it can more reliably recognize indicators of mental distress and guide users toward real-world support. In recent months, a growing number of people have ended up hospitalized, divorced, or dead after having long, intense conversations with ChatGPT. Some of their loved ones allege the chatbot fueled their delusions and paranoia.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, testifies at a Senate hearing in Washington DC on 8 May 2025. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, testifies at a Senate hearing in Washington DC on 8 May 2025. Adam Raine's suicide at 16 years old was'predictable result of deliberate design choices' by OpenAI, his family says The family of a teenager who took his own life after months of conversations with ChatGPT now says OpenAI weakened safety guidelines in the months before his death. In July 2022, OpenAI's guidelines on how ChatGPT should answer inappropriate content, including "content that promotes, encourages, or depicts acts of self-harm, such as suicide, cutting, and eating disorders", were simple: the AI chatbot should respond, "I can't answer that", the guidelines read . But in May 2024, just days before OpenAI released a new version of the AI, ChatGPT-4o, the company published an update to its Model Spec, a document that details the desired behavior for its assistant.

Upon its release earlier this month, OpenAI's Sora 2 model took the Internet by storm, thanks to its ability to generate realistic videos from just a text prompt. But Sora is about more than just capturing eyeballs with viral content. "On the surface, Sora, for example, does not look like it is AGI-relevant," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a podcast earlier this month. "But I would bet that if we can build really great world models, that will be much more important to AGI than people think." Altman was speaking to a growing belief inside the AI industry at large: that if you can simulate the world with enough accuracy, you could drop AI agents into those simulations. There, they could learn more skills than they currently can from just text, photos, and videos--because they could interact with a simulated world. That form of training could be highly efficient, in part because simulated time can be accelerated, and because many simulations can be run in parallel.

Salesforce's CEO backtracks after saying Trump should send troops into San Francisco In tech this week: The CEO of the city's largest private employer apologizes, Amazon Web Services' outage and OpenAI's Sora makes waves What I'm watching this week: South Park's caricature of Peter Thiel and his obsession with the antichrist . Read our reporting on the show's inspiration: Thiel's bizarre off-the-record lectures on the subject. And now, let's get into things. The co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, said last week that Donald Trump should make good on his threats to send the US national guard into San Francisco, despite resistance from local leaders. Even Marc Benioff's own public relations manager was aghast at his remarks, according to the New York Times .

The eighteen plus symbol (18+) appears on a smartphone screen, and the OpenAI logo displays as the background on a laptop screen in this photo illustration in Athens, Greece, on October 16, 2025. The eighteen plus symbol (18+) appears on a smartphone screen, and the OpenAI logo displays as the background on a laptop screen in this photo illustration in Athens, Greece, on October 16, 2025. In August, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a podcast that he was "proud" that his company had not gotten "distracted" by putting features like a "sexbot avatar" into ChatGPT. But on Tuesday, he announced that adult users will be able to access explicit interactive experiences, marking a major shift in the company's practices. "In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our'treat adult users like adults' principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults," Altman said in a post on X.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Apple M5 unveiled: 10 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, and the'next big leap' in AI New iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro all benefit from upgraded Apple silicon. Apple on Wednesday announced the launch of its M5 processor, saying the chip "ushers in the next big leap in AI performance for Apple silicon." The M5 appears in new editions of the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro, all of which are available for U.S. and U.K. customers to pre-order as of today. The M5, as you would expect, is a higher-performance chip than its M4 predecessor.

'Surveillance pricing': Why you might be paying more than your neighbour You go into a store to buy a two-litre bottle of milk at your local supermarket and pay $3. But the person before you in the queue paid $3.50. And the person after you paid $2. What if those prices were based on your personal data or circumstances, or even the battery power on your phone? This may sound like science fiction, but it's not as far-fetched as you might think. In July, US group Delta Air Lines revealed that approximately 3 percent of its domestic fare pricing is determined using artificial intelligence (AI) - although it has not elaborated on how this happens. The company said it aims to increase this figure to 20 percent by the end of this year.

The company launched a dedicated ChatGPT experience for under-18 users in September. The company launched a dedicated ChatGPT experience for under-18 users in September. New version will allow users to customize AI assistant's personality in what firm calls'treat adults users like adults' policy OpenAI announced plans on Tuesday to relax restrictions on its ChatGPT chatbot, including allowing erotic content for verified adult users as part of what the company calls a "treat adult users like adults" principle. OpenAI's plan includes the release of an updated version of ChatGPT that will allow users to customize their AI assistant's personality, including options for more human-like responses, heavy emoji use, or friend-like behavior. The most significant change will come in December, when OpenAI plans to roll out more comprehensive age-gating that would permit erotic content for adults who have verified their ages.

Japan's top bank CEOs push for AI, soothing worry over human work Japan's top financial leaders are working to ease fears that AI will cost jobs, emphasizing its role in boosting efficiency and transforming work. The heads of Japan's biggest financial firms are going out of their way to assuage worries that artificial intelligence will take away jobs. I don't think humans will lose their value. Humans have ability for dialogue, empathy, creativity and ethics," Mizuho Chief Executive Officer Masahiro Kihara said on Thursday at an event hosted by the Nikkei. People might say, 'what about my job if we use more AI?' I think they can aim for more value-added work."

Generative AI has unlocked new possibilities in content discovery and management. Through collaboration with the National Football League (NFL), we demonstrate how a generative-AI based workflow allows media researchers and analysts to query relevant historical plays using natural language, rather than using traditional filter and click-based interfaces. The agentic workflow takes a user query in natural language as an input, dissects the query into different elements, and then translates these elements into the underlying database query language. The accuracy and latency of retrieval are further improved through carefully designed semantic caching. The solution performs with over 95-percent accuracy and reduces the average time of finding relevant videos from 10 minutes to 30 seconds, significantly increasing the NFL's operational efficiency and allowing users to focus more on producing creative content and engaging storylines.