The new collaboration with keyboard maker Work Louder is available to order today. The first piece of OpenAI hardware is here, and no, it has nothing to do with Jony Ive . It's called the Codex Micro, and it's a keypad created in collaboration with keyboard maker Work Louder, specifically for controlling OpenAI's agentic coding feature Codex . The two companies started teasing the accessory in June, and the Codex Micro is available to order now for $230, ahead of the Jony Ive-designed smart speaker OpenAI is rumored to be introducing later this year. If you've seen Work Louder's Creator Micro 2, or the Framer Micro the company created in collaboration with the website builder Framer, you have a good sense of the fit and finish of the Codex Micro.

OpenAI employees have donated more than $215,000 to a political effort opposing Leading the Future, a group backed by the company's president, Greg Brockman. A group of rank-and-file OpenAI employees have donated more than $215,000 to a super PAC pushing for stricter regulations on frontier AI labs. Guardrails Alliance, which launched last month with $5 million in total initial funding, bills itself as a populist effort supported by tech workers, labor unions, and other groups. It's aiming to be a counterweight to Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry super PAC bankrolled with more than $100 million from technology industry leaders, including OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman. Seven current OpenAI employees have donated to Guardrails Alliance, as well as one former employee, WIRED has learned.

OpenAI's first device will reportedly be a'humanlike' rechargeable speaker OpenAI's first device will reportedly be a'humanlike' rechargeable speaker It will be powered by a more advanced version of the model used by ChatGPT's new voice mode, Bloomberg says. It has long been reported that OpenAI's first hardware product will be an AI-powered speaker . Now, a new Bloomberg report reveals more details about the upcoming device, which will apparently be rechargeable and can easily be carried from one room to another. You're supposed to be able to take it to the kitchen, for instance, to help you with cooking instructions and then carry it back to your living room or bedroom. The publication says the speaker is meant to be a humanlike AI companion that can talk to you naturally in the way ChatGPT can, which can also control your smart home devices and play audio.

OpenAI's first device will be movable, screenless speaker built as AI companion OpenAI is developing a new smart speaker that will turn its presence on a computer screen to a physical manifestation of its ChatGPT. OpenAI's much-anticipated push into consumer devices is slated to begin with a mobile, screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the artificial intelligence era, according to people familiar with the matter. The product -- still under development -- is meant to serve as a humanlike AI companion that lives in the home, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn't been announced. It will help control smart-home appliances, play media, answer questions, respond to messages and tap into the range of capabilities offered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, they said. The device represents a critical next step for OpenAI, a top developer of AI models that is poised for an initial public offering in the coming months. The move will vault the company into deeper competition with the likes of Apple, Amazon and Alphabet's Google, and the push has already met some resistance.

Complainants claim that their works on Google Play Books were not licensed for use in training Gemini. Complainants claim that their works on Google Play Books were not licensed for use in training Gemini. The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers - Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier - and bestselling American author Scott Turow. The publishers argue that Google repurposed books that had been supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. Those services allowed Google to use the works in specific ways - for example, to display searchable snippets or sell ebooks - but not, the lawsuit claims, to copy them for training commercial AI products.

PCWorld tested ChatGPT's new "computer use" functionality in the recently released super-app, which allows the AI to control desktop applications on macOS. The GPT-5.6 Sol model successfully played chess and wrote in Journal apps, demonstrating advanced understanding of game strategy and graphical interface navigation. This desktop control capability positions ChatGPT alongside Claude's similar features, with OpenAI suggesting uses for testing and automating repetitive tasks. Just a few months ago, I could barely get an AI agent to open the Chess app on my Mac, much less actually play a game of it. But after testing the all-new ChatGPT super-app, I can report that the days of clunky AI "computer use" functionality are pretty much over. Released last Thursday, the ChatGPT super-app boasts a variety of features, including the built-in Codex coding harness and ChatGPT Work, an AI agent that can tap into your local files and create detailed reports in seconds. The revamped ChatGPT also supports "computer use," allowing it to take control your PC's mouse and desktop apps. Computer use functionality isn't new--the Claude desktop app has supported it for months--but it new for ChatGPT, so I decided to give it a go. I fired up ChatGPT on my Mac mini, switched the app to "Work" mode, set the model to GPT-5.6 Sol ( the latest and greatest OpenAI model), and gave it a simple prompt: "Can you play chess on my Mac?" ChatGPT asked me to approve some new permissions, including the ability to record my screen so it could see what it was doing.

As they scramble to keep their systems online, AI companies are making things expensive for the rest of us. Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude are so resource-hungry that tech companies may be purchasing 70 percent of the world's supply of high-end computer memory, causing a shortage. As a result, the prices of computer memory and storage are skyrocketing: Hard drives that I bought for my reporting two years ago for $350 each were $800 when I checked two weeks ago, and are now out of stock. The prices of some laptops have gone up as much as 50 percent, and low-cost computers are being hit the hardest. Affordable entry-level computers may "disappear by 2028" according to one forecast .

UK fears a'triple whammy': oversized investment in AI stocks, slower adoption of AI than predicted and the breakneck pace of AI's development The UK wants a piece of the mammoth global investment in AI but fears it as well. In the coming weeks, the Bank of England is planning to ease capital rules to help encourage more lending. But the central bank simultaneously expressed concerns that there are too many loans going to investors like hedge funds, who are using that money to buy up AI stocks. The central bank's moves reflect the country's global position: hoping to catch up to the US and China in the AI race, struggling to mobilize its resources to do so, and too wary of the risks to go full bore. UK banking regulators have recently been under enormous pressure to do more to stimulate growth, my colleague Kalyeena Makortoff this week reports.

Check your subscription status, update your details and more. Powerful artificial intelligence models built by Chinese companies have gone from inducing widespread panic to being met with a shrug of the shoulders - what changed? When Chinese company DeepSeek released its open-source R1 model in January 2025, it made headlines around the world. The large language model (LLM) was reported to rival some of the most powerful AIs from US companies, but it was completely free for anyone to download. A trillion dollars was wiped off the value of US tech companies and US lawmakers immediately proposed banning it on government devices.

You'll start seeing the'Ask Gemini' button in your browser. Google has just rolled out Gemini for Chrome in the UK. The integration doesn't sit well with everybody -- and Gemini isn't the most popular AI assistant out there -- but you will start seeing an Ask Gemini button with a sparkle icon soon if you're in the United Kingdom and use Google's browser. Gemini's Chrome integration used to be exclusively available to AI Pro or AI Ultra subscribers, but Google made it more widely available in the US on desktop in late 2025. The company then rolled out the feature to Latin America and the Middle East, and then to Canada, India and New Zealand, until it made its way to over 50 countries around the world.