OpenAI is working to fix a bug that allowed -- and, in some cases, reportedly encouraged -- minors to generate erotica on ChatGPT, as TechCrunch reported on Monday, April 28. OpenAI told TechCrunch that the company is "actively deploying a fix," since its policies don't allow its AI chatbot to send responses like this to users under 18 years old. Young people have been finding ways to access pornography and erotica since the dawn of the internet, so it's not surprising that youngsters would also test the limits of the popular AI chatbot. An OpenAI spokesperson told Mashable over email that its "model policies don't allow the kind of responses that happened here, and they shouldn't have been shown to users." "Protecting younger users is a top priority, and our Model Spec, which guides model behavior, clearly restricts sensitive content like erotica to narrow contexts such as scientific, historical, or news reporting. In this case, a bug allowed responses outside those guidelines, and we are actively deploying a fix to limit these generations," the OpenAI statement read.

Congress has passed a bill that forces tech companies to take action against certain deepfakes and revenge porn posted on their platforms. In a 409-2 vote on Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Take It Down" Act, which has received bipartisan support. The bill also received vocal support from celebrities and First Lady Melania Trump. The bill already passed the Senate in a vote last month. The Take It Down Act will now be sent to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

It's been clear for a while now that the default ChatGPT experience is designed to nod along with most of what you say. But even that tendency can go too far, apparently. In a thread on X posted on April 27, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that "GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying." And today, Altman announced on X that the company was fully rolling back the 4o update for paid and free users alike. But users have started complaining online about the 4o model's overly agreeable personality.

As of Monday, April 28, OpenAI is experimenting with new ways to recommend products to ChatGPT users. OpenAI announced the update on Monday, saying the ChatGPT search tool will now make it "simpler and faster to find, compare, and buy products in ChatGPT." In a post on X, OpenAI said that the AI chatbot can now show product images, comparisons, pricing, reviews, and even a direct link to various retailers. Mashable was able to generate the new features using the ChatGPT 4o model. The new "shopping improvements" make ChatGPT a stronger competitor to Google's search product, which searchers often use to find product recommendations.

In the thick of Meta's first-ever AI developer conference, LlamaCon, CEO Mark Zuckerberg hit the launch button on Meta AI -- the company's full-throttle answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to Meta's April 29 press release, the new standalone AI app is built on the company's latest Llama 4 model. It's pitched as a hyper-personalized assistant for users already living inside the Meta ecosystem: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook -- you know the drill. In a choice Instagram video, Zuckerberg, framed in a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses, pitched the app as a product built for voice-first conversations. One standout feature is the Discover feed.

OpenAI is rolling back a recent update to GPT-4o, the default model that powers ChatGPT, following complaints from users that it made the chat bot act like a weirdo. "The last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it), and we are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a X post spotted by TechCrunch. As of midday Tuesday, Altman said ChatGPT was running on an older, less sycophantic version of GPT-4o for all free users. The company hopes to get paid users back on an older release of the model by later today. "We're working on additional fixes to model personality and will share more in the coming days," Altman said, adding OpenAI would share more information about what went wrong "at some point."

As Meta's first-ever generative AI conference gets underway, the company is also previewing a significant update on its plans to bring AI features to WhatsApp chats. Buried in its LlamaCon updates, the company shared that it's working on something called "Private Processing," which will allow users to take advantage of generative AI capabilities within WhatsApp without eroding its privacy features. According to Meta, Private Processing is an "optional capability" that will enable people to "leverage AI capabilities for things like summarizing unread messages or refining them, while keeping messages private." WhatsApp, of course, is known for its strong privacy protections and end-to-end encryption. That would seem incompatible with cloud-based AI features like Meta AI.

The end-to-end encrypted communication app WhatsApp, used by roughly 3 billion people around the world, will roll out cloud-based AI capabilities in the coming weeks that are designed to preserve WhatsApp's defining security and privacy guarantees while offering users access to message summarization and composition tools. Meta has been incorporating generative AI features across its services that are built on its open source large language model, Llama. And WhatsApp already incorporates a light blue circle that gives users access to the Meta AI assistant. But many users have balked at this addition, given that interactions with the AI assistant aren't shielded from Meta the way end-to-end encrtyped WhatsApp chats are. The new feature, dubbed Private Processing, is meant to address these concerns with what the company says is a carefully architected and purpose-built platform devoted to processing data for AI tasks without the information being accessible to Meta, WhatsApp, or any other party.

Meta didn't wait for Tuesday's LlamaCon keynote to unveil its first big AI announcement of the week. The company launched a standalone app that competes with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other multimodal AI chatbots. Sticking to the company's roots, the app also includes a social feed and the ability to draw on info from your profile and posts you've shared. The Meta AI app offers similar features to rival chatbots, including text and voice chats, live web access and the ability to generate and edit images. But it also includes a Discover feed that (for better or worse) adds a social element to your AI queries.

OpenAI, which spends far more money than it takes in, is trying something new to stanch the bleeding. The company just announced that all users, including on the free tier, can shop from ChatGPT Search. "You can now search for a product, compare options and buy products in ChatGPT," OpenAI said in a press release. Categories currently available include fashion, beauty, home goods and electronics, with expansion to more categories set to come later. The search results you'll obtain are "chosen independently and are not ads," the company promises. The updates are available in 4o and are rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Free and even logged-out users.