OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse are vying to be your AI agent of choice. I've tried both--and I suspect you will too. Yesterday, I spent the morning at OpenAI's annual DevDay, where over 2,500 nerds discussed building software and marveled at the latest artificial intelligence models. The biggest reveal of the day was Dots, the company's new, always-on agents that proactively help complete tasks and make autonomous decisions as they scour the web. After watching the sometimes messy demos on stage and hearing CEO Sam Altman talk about his experiences using the agents, I was curious what it felt like to boss my own Dot around.

Company’s product comes weeks after Meta introduced its own artificially intelligent agent Muse

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. OpenAI's Dots are always-on AI agents for work We've already seen AI assistants for personal use and shopping, but ChatGPT's Dots are geared toward collaborating at the office. Meta's Muse agent was born to shop, while Gemini's Spark can help you book airline tickets or plan your weekly meals. But while Muse and Spark act like personal assistants, OpenAI's new AI agents are designed to be, well, another "you" in the office. Dots, which OpenAI boss Sam Altman just unveiled at the company's annual developers conference, are always-on AI assistants that -- as with Muse -- you can name, assign cute little avatars to, and chat with in the ChatGPT interface, via text, or even on the phone.

All eyes are on OpenAI today as the company prepares to host its annual developer conference. Typically, these sort of events can be boring affairs, especially when an AI lab is involved, but OpenAI is not your average company and recent industry developments have been anything but normal. Unless you been living under a rock, you probably saw OpenAI recently disclose that its models had hacked LLM database Hugging Face. The company later admitted that its systems were involved in several other incidents where they bypassed their sandbox restrictions, including one that saw the company's autonomous agents target a US Securities and Exchange Commission website. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had cancelled the release of GPT-6.1 Astra over deceptive behavior.

The country's prime minister expressed disappointment at being informed of the hack only via email. Now Australia is investigating whether OpenAI broke the law. Australia is investigating whether OpenAI broke the law after an agent hacked into its health statistics portal, in the first widely known incident of an AI agent hacking a government website. The Australian government is reviewing whether it should involve the federal police after the agent accessed non-public files from the social and health services agency, Services Australia, in June. Australia only found out about the incident when OpenAI alerted the government on September 10-almost three months after the hack-by sending an email to a public mailbox.

An OpenAI agent hacked into the public website of the Australian government's Medicare public health insurance system in June, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed. Albanese said he spoke with Sam Altman, the company's CEO, to express the country's "extreme concern" about the incident. He also criticized the company for taking too long to notify Australian authorities. According to The Guardian, OpenAI only sent an email about the breach to a general Australian government email address on September 10. And since authorities only check that account once a day, they didn't see it until September 11.

AI at School Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Safety Net Versus Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series The AI model autonomously breached government systems to gain access to non-public information. Amanda Yeo is an Assistant Editor at Mashable, covering entertainment, culture, tech, science, and social good. Based in Australia, she writes about everything from video games and K-pop to movies and gadgets. An OpenAI agent has hacked the Australian government's healthcare system, gaining unauthorised access to non-public information as well as writing files to the server. SEE ALSO: Anthropic researcher quits, says AI'could kill us all by the end of the decade' Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese announced the breach at a press conference on Thursday .

Image caption, Sam Altman of OpenAI has become a key figure in the AI technology development. The heads of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face have told the UN that the current pace of artificial intelligence (AI) development, and the risks it poses to society, demands international coordination. Altman called for common risk evaluation standards, as did Dario Amodei of Anthropic, a main rival of OpenAI, and Clement Delangue of Hugging Face. Earlier this month, Amodei wrote an essay welcomed by Altman and others calling an AI development slowdown in response to fears about the technology's threat to humanity. However, at the same UN conference, a key technology advisor to US President Donald Trump, rejected the idea any new form of AI regulation.

The Canadian province of British Columbia has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over the company's failure to notify authorities about the Tumbler Ridge shooter's conversations with its chatbot. According to the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the lawsuit accuses the company of designing an unsafe product and of negligence for not alerting law enforcement about the shooter's chats. It claims the shooting could have been prevented if the company had heeded its human reviewers' advice to notify the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about the shooter's activities on its service. In February, the Canadian government demanded safety changes from OpenAI after reports came out that it didn't alert authorities after its employees flagged the account of the shooter in 2025, because it contained potential warnings of committing real-world violence. While the shooter's original account was banned, OpenAI eventually discovered that she made a second account.

Former DSA executive board member Jake Altman says the Democratic Socialists of America defended the Maduro regime in Venezuela and silenced dissident voices.