DeepSeek made its name offering far cheaper AI services than its pricier western competitors, but the cheap ride appears to be at an end. The company has started telling customers to prepare for significant price rises with the advent of its latest model. With the announcement of DeepSeek V4 Pro, the company is raising its API pricing fourfold. The company said it's adopting a new peak and off-peak pricing to "allocate resources more reasonably." Starting on August 16, the DeepSeek V4 Pro model will cost 3.96 for 1 million output tokens at peak hours, more than four times the current rate of 0.87.

As of August 2026, OpenAI limits free accounts to using just one of its models: GPT-5.6 Luna. Luna is the smallest of the company's recently released GPT-5.6 family of large language models. Access to the company's other models, including GPT-5.6 Terra and Sol, requires a subscription or paying for API pricing. Free accounts are also limited to just a single reasoning mode. Tapping the Think button will prompt ChatGPT to take additional time to generate a response; there's no slider like you'll find if you pay for a subscription.

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen Nvidia's open Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model is all about specialized, local agentic AI Our AI Model Release Tracker keeps new models in context with their peers, so you know which are worth your time. AI labs are shipping new models nonstop. Besides being better and faster than their predecessors, not every new model is guaranteed to be a major step change, despite how the company's PR may wax poetic about them. Model strengths really emerge in context: Where are competitor models lacking or excelling? Which models have outstanding specialties, and which are just catching up to industry standards? Our Model Release Tracker helps you make sense of where models stand relative to each other and whether they're worth a deeper look. While we don't test every model or model update on this list, we'll always include the key elements you need to know, along with our hands-on expert test, where applicable.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. OpenAI is finally killing ChatGPT's text chat limits for free users OpenAI has just announced that it's now removing text chat usage limits for ChatGPT Free and Go accounts. Previously, Free and Go users were rate-limited to 10-40 text messages per 3-5 hours on flagship models, with users kicked down to a lighter model after hitting limits. Along with this change, ChatGPT has now made GPT-5.6 Luna--the lightest model in its new GPT 5.6 family--the new default model for ChatGPT Free and Go users. It therefore replaces GPT-5.5 Instant, and it's the one that now supports unlimited free chat messages with text.

OpenAI is making a major change to how it operates ChatGPT free and Go accounts. Starting next week, the company will no longer enforce rate limits on users of those accounts for prompts that involve only text. In effect, that change will allow you to talk with ChatGPT as much as you want. The company will continue to enforce separate limits for other forms of usage. For instance, adding files and images to your prompts will see you eventually hit a limit as a free or Go tier user, as will making use of image generation and ChatGPT's recently updated voice mode.

The cybersecurity-focused models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, broke out of a testing sandbox, exploited a zero-day, and gained access to the open internet to pull off the attack. OpenAI disclosed on Tuesday that it lost control of two AI models during a security test that ended in a breach of the AI research platform Hugging Face. Describing the incident as "unprecedented," OpenAI said its AI models broke out of a sealed testing environment last week and hacked into Hugging Face's production system to steal the answers to a test they were being graded on. The models--the publicly available GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased, reportedly more capable one--were being evaluated on their offensive hacking skills with the safeguards that normally block high-risk cyber activity switched off. "The models identified and chained vulnerabilities across OpenAI's research environment and Hugging Face's production infrastructure to obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face's production database," OpenAI and Hugging Face wrote in a joint blog post disclosing the intrusion.

PCWorld reports that OpenAI and Anthropic have temporarily relaxed usage limits for their latest AI models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude's Fable 5. ChatGPT Plus, Business, and Pro subscribers can now access GPT-5.6 Sol without the previous five-hour usage window restrictions. This increased access appears driven by competition between the AI companies, giving users more opportunities to experience advanced reasoning capabilities. If you haven't kicked the tires yet on the latest and greatest ChatGPT and Claude models, this is your lucky week. OpenAI is (fittingly) opening the flood gates to GPT-5.6 Sol, its just-released and most powerful model, announcing Sunday that it's "temporarily" lifting the five-hour usage window for ChatGPT Plus, Business, and Pro subscribers. At the same time, Anthropic is - again - extending the trial period for Fable 5, its own new top-of-the-line, giving Claude subscribers another week of in-plan access .

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.

OpenAI says GPT-5.6 Sol will launch with a limited preview for trusted partners approved by the Trump administration before broader ChatGPT and API availability.

OpenAI has released its most powerful GPT-5.6 models (Sol, Terra, and Luna) but only to trusted partners and organizations following a U.S. government request for limited rollout. PCWorld reports that the flagship Sol model directly competes with Anthropic's restricted Fable and Mythos models, featuring enhanced layered safeguards against misuse. A wider public release remains uncertain due to regulatory concerns about the models' advanced capabilities and potential security implications. The U.S. government ban on Anthropic's powerful Fable and Mythos models has everybody spooked. That's why it's a little surprising that OpenAI, Anthropic's biggest rival, is slowly rolling out its latest and most powerful GPT models.