Warning shot or publicity stunt - how worried should we be about the OpenAI hack? This week the tech world was gripped by a story that has it all - and which started like a sci-fi thriller. Hugging Face - a kind of app store for artificial intelligence tools - announced on 16 July it had been hacked by a cyber criminal wielding enormously powerful AI. The bombshell announcement was full of scary, highly technical terms: a swarm of sandboxes, agentic attacker, and self-migrating command and control. Hugging Face said the hack was different from anything it had handled before because it was done at superhuman speed by an AI with little or no human guidance. The AI performed 17,000 actions in less than two days, successfully breaching the large wealthy tech company to steal secrets.

The company is rolling out its ChatGPT Health feature to users in the US who are 18 years or older. OpenAI is rolling out its dedicated health experience, ChatGPT Health, to users who are 18 years or older and live in the US. The company began testing ChatGPT Health in January in a separate portal, but this updated version lets ChatGPT reference relevant health data in any conversation. The new feature is designed to go beyond the chatbot's existing ability to answer health-related questions -- something OpenAI claims its new GPT-5.6 Sol model improves -- and grounds responses in personal data from doctors' notes, blood tests and more.

ChatGPT medical advice brought man'to brink of death', lawsuit alleges A man who claims medical advice from ChatGPT brought him to the brink of death has sued OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot, and its founder Sam Altman. A lawsuit filed by Scott Winters, a 55-year-old pastor from Florida, claimed ChatGPT told him not to seek medical help after repeatedly asking about symptoms in the build-up to a near-fatal pulmonary embolism. Winters' lawyers alleged the platform repeatedly and insistently misdiagnosed him while drawing on previous discussions about religion to assure him he would recover. OpenAI's Drew Pusateri told the BBC's US news partner CBS News that ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be used as a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment. He also said it was common for people to seek health information online, adding: AI can make that experience better by helping them find clearer answers, organise their questions and prepare for conversations with medical professionals.

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.

If had debuted this year, William Shakespeare might have been accused of writing it with AI. A certain suspicious rhetorical device appears again and again in the play. It's in Act I, Scene ii: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." In Act III, Scene ii: "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." And later in that same scene: "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

Apple has sued OpenAI and two former employees, alleging misappropriation of its trade secrets as the artificial intelligence company seeks to build its own hardware for ChatGPT, a major rupture in a partnership between the iPhone maker and the AI giant. The complaint, filed in a California federal court on Friday, alleges a coordinated effort to steal Apple's confidential information, including product designs, manufacturing processes and supply chain strategies. The lawsuit names Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer, and Tang Yew Tan, a former vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, as defendants, along with the OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC and io Products. Neither defendant immediately responded to a request for comment. Apple alleged that Liu failed to return a company-issued work laptop and later used an authentication bug to access Apple's internal network, downloading "dozens of Apple's confidential hardware-related files".

PCWorld explores strategic AI delegation, emphasizing three key questions to determine which tasks are appropriate for AI assistance versus human decision-making. The guide matters for productivity-focused users seeking to leverage AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for tedious data compilation and repetitive tasks while avoiding over-reliance. Key recommendations include delegating boring, repeatable tasks like email management and voice memo transcription to AI, but retaining all final decision-making authority for yourself. You know what's harder than making decisions?

The move comes after Simo took significant medical leave. She will stay on as a part-time adviser. OpenAI's chief executive of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, is leaving her full-time role at the company and transitioning to become a part-time adviser. The move comes after Simo took a monthslong medical leave due to a worsening neuroimmune condition. "Three months ago, I had to go on medical leave after a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness I've lived with for seven years," Simo wrote in a post Thursday on X. "During that time, it became clear that the road to recovery would be much longer and more complex than I had anticipated--and that I needed to focus on it fully."

PCWorld reports the new ChatGPT app launches for Mac with Windows version coming soon, featuring GPT-5.6 models and enhanced capabilities. The superapp introduces ChatGPT Work agent for complex projects, browser tabs, web publishing through'Sites' feature, and PC control functionality. GPT-5.6 offers three performance tiers (Sol, Terra, Luna) with access levels varying by subscription plan, targeting Claude Desktop's market position.

Experiments in using AI to build AI show that the future doesn't just belong to the frontier labs. These days, the frontier AI labs are all racing to build self-improving models . Some believe it's the surest route to superintelligence --as AI improves itself in a mind-melting loop, the thinking goes, it will eventually surpass human comprehension (and perhaps even control). That's all well and good, but I have a newsletter to produce. I wondered if recursive self-improvement might also be useful for me.