🤖 OpenAI adds ads to free ChatGPT users 🤖
Premium tiers remain ad-free as OpenAI pursues new revenue streams.

OpenAI has announced a major monetization shift by introducing targeted advertisements in ChatGPT for free and Go tier users in the United States. Ads will appear as "Sponsored Recommendations" below AI responses, with targeting based on conversation context while excluding sensitive categories like health, politics, and content involving minors. Premium subscription tiers including Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise will remain completely ad-free. OpenAI has explicitly committed to never selling user data or allowing advertisements to influence ChatGPT's responses—a critical distinction as the company scales its business model to match growing infrastructure costs. This pricing strategy could reshape how millions access AI tools daily.

🚀 AI startup Astral: 1 marketer can now replace 10 🚀
Viral demo sparks backlash and $1.2M in pre-seed funding.

Astral, a new AI startup, has sparked significant controversy with its marketing agent that claims to enable one person to outperform a team of ten marketers. The company's release video went viral, accumulating over 3 million views and generating intense backlash. Despite the controversy, Astral successfully secured $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. The AI tool is designed to browse, click, and post across marketing channels autonomously like a human operator, handling tasks from content creation to campaign execution. The rollout signals growing competitive pressure in the AI marketing automation space, though the tool is not yet publicly available.

🇨🇳 DeepMind CEO: China AI "only months behind" 🇨🇳
Hassabis warns the gap with Chinese labs is narrowing fast.

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis stated that China's AI models "may be only a matter of months behind" U.S. labs in terms of capabilities, but emphasized they have yet to demonstrate innovation surpassing the frontier. The comments come as Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek continue to make rapid progress in model development and efficiency, raising concerns about competitive dynamics in the global AI race. Hassabis's assessment carries weight given his position leading one of the world's most advanced AI research organizations, and signals that export controls may not be slowing Chinese progress as much as hoped.

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⚡ xAI's Colossus 2 hits 1 gigawatt milestone ⚡

Elon Musk announced that xAI's Colossus 2 supercomputer, which powers the Grok AI model, is now fully operational as the world's first gigawatt-scale AI training cluster. Combined with the existing Colossus 1 infrastructure, xAI now commands computing resources equivalent to over one million Nvidia H100 GPUs. Additional upgrades are planned, cementing xAI's position in the AI infrastructure race.

📱 ChatGPT Go rolls out globally at $8/month 📱

OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT Go, its most affordable subscription tier, to users worldwide after initially launching in India in 2025. Priced at $8 per month in the US, the plan offers 10x more messages, file uploads, AI image generation, access to GPT-5.2 Instant, and extended conversation memory. This pricing tier targets cost-sensitive users while US subscribers on Free and Go tiers will see advertisements.