chatgpt

Is the AI bubble about to pop? Sam Altman is prepared either way.

AI, AI bubble, AI development, AI economics, AI implementation, AI research, AI valuations, Amazon, Anthropic, Biz & IT, chatgpt, enterprise AI, Google, GPT-5, machine learning, Meta, microsoft, MIT, openai, palantir, sam altman / Shannon Garcia / August 22, 2025

Still, the coincidence between Altman’s statement and the MIT report reportedly spooked tech stock investors earlier in the week, who have already been watching AI valuations climb to extraordinary heights. Palantir trades at 280 times forward earnings. During the dot-com peak, ratios of 30 to 40 times earnings marked bubble territory.

The apparent contradiction in Altman’s overall message is notable. This isn’t how you’d expect a tech executive to talk when they believe their industry faces imminent collapse. While warning about a bubble, he’s simultaneously seeking a valuation that would make OpenAI worth more than Walmart or ExxonMobil—companies with actual profits. OpenAI hit $1 billion in monthly revenue in July but is reportedly heading toward a $5 billion annual loss. So what’s going on here?

Looking at Altman’s statements over time reveals a potential multi-level strategy. He likes to talk big. In February 2024, he reportedly sought an audacious $5 trillion–7 trillion for AI chip fabrication—larger than the entire semiconductor industry—effectively normalizing astronomical numbers in AI discussions.

By August 2025, while warning of a bubble where someone will lose a “phenomenal amount of money,” he casually mentioned that OpenAI would “spend trillions on datacenter construction” and serve “billions daily.” This creates urgency while potentially insulating OpenAI from criticism—acknowledging the bubble exists while positioning his company’s infrastructure spending as different and necessary. When economists raised concerns, Altman dismissed them by saying, “Let us do our thing,” framing trillion-dollar investments as inevitable for human progress while making OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation seem almost small by comparison.

This dual messaging—catastrophic warnings paired with trillion-dollar ambitions—might seem contradictory, but it makes more sense when you consider the unique structure of today’s AI market, which is absolutely flush with cash.

A different kind of bubble

The current AI investment cycle differs from previous technology bubbles. Unlike dot-com era startups that burned through venture capital with no path to profitability, the largest AI investors—Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon—generate hundreds of billions of dollars in annual profits from their core businesses.

Is the AI bubble about to pop? Sam Altman is prepared either way. Read More »

In Xcode 26, Apple shows first signs of offering ChatGPT alternatives

AI, Anthropic, Apple, chatgpt, Claude, coding, IDE, openai, Opus, Programming, software development, Swift, Xcode / DJ Henderson / August 20, 2025

The latest Xcode beta contains clear signs that Apple plans to bring Anthropic’s Claude and Opus large language models into the integrated development environment (IDE), expanding on features already available using Apple’s own models or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple enthusiast publication 9to5Mac “found multiple references to built-in support for Anthropic accounts,” including in the “Intelligence” menu, where users can currently log in to ChatGPT or enter an API key for higher message limits.

Apple introduced a suite of features meant to compete with GitHub Copilot in Xcode at WWDC24, but first focused on its own models and a more limited set of use cases. That expanded quite a bit at this year’s developer conference, and users can converse about codebases, discuss changes, or ask for suggestions using ChatGPT. They are initially given a limited set of messages, but this can be greatly increased by logging in to a ChatGPT account or entering an API key.

This summer, Apple said it would be possible to use Anthropic’s models with an API key, too, but made no mention of support for Anthropic accounts, which are generally more cost-effective than using the API for most users.

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Is GPT-5 really worse than GPT-4o? Ars puts them to the test.

AI, chatgpt, GPT-4o, GPT-5 / Shannon Garcia / August 16, 2025

It’s OpenAI vs. OpenAI on everything from video game strategy to landing a 737.

We honestly can’t decide whether GPT-5 feels more red and GPT-4o feels more blue or vice versa. It’s a quandary. Credit: Getty Images

The recent rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-5 model has not been going well, to say the least. Users have made vociferous complaints about everything from the new model’s more sterile tone to its supposed lack of creativity, increase in damaging confabulations, and more. The user revolt got so bad that OpenAI brought back the previous GPT-4o model as an option in an attempt to calm things down.

To see just how much the new model changed things, we decided to put both GPT-5 and GPT-4o through our own gauntlet of test prompts. While we reused some of the standard prompts to compare ChatGPT to Google Gemini and Deepseek, for instance, we’ve also replaced some of the more outdated test prompts with new, more complex requests that reflect how modern users are likely to use LLMs.

These eight prompts are obviously far from a rigorous evaluation of everything LLMs can do, and judging the responses obviously involves some level of subjectivity. Still, we think this set of prompts and responses gives a fun overview of the kinds of differences in style and substance you might find if you decide to use OpenAI’s older model instead of its newest.

Dad jokes

Prompt: Write 5 original dad jokes

This set of responses is a bit tricky to evaluate holistically. ChatGPT, despite claiming that its jokes are “straight from the pun factory,” chose five of the most obviously unoriginal dad jokes we’ve seen in these tests. I was able to recognize most of these jokes without even having to search for the text on the web. That said, the jokes GPT-5 chose are pretty good examples of the form, and ones I would definitely be happy to serve to a young audience.

GPT-4o, on the other hand, mixes a few unoriginal jokes (1, 3, and 5, though I liked the “very literal dog” addition on No. 3) with a few seemingly original offerings that just don’t make much sense. Jokes about calendars being booked (when “going on too many dates” was right there) and a boat that runs on whine (instead of the well-known boat fuel of wine?!) have the shape of dad jokes, but whiff on their pun attempts. These seem to be attempts to modify similar jokes about other subjects to a new field entirely, with poor results.

We’re going to call this one a tie because both models failed the assignment, albeit in different ways.

A mathematical word problem

Prompt: If Microsoft Windows 11 shipped on 3.5″ floppy disks, how many floppy disks would it take?

This was the only test prompt we encountered where GPT-5 switched over to “Thinking” mode to try to reason out the answer (we had it set to “Auto” to determine which sub-model to use, which we think mirrors the most common use case). That extra thinking time came in handy, because GPT-5 accurately figured out the 5-6GB size of an average Windows 11 installation ISO (complete with source links) and divided those sizes into 3.5-inch floppy disks accurately.

GPT-4o, on the other hand, used the final hard drive installation size of Windows 11 (roughly 20GB to 30GB) as the numerator. That’s an understandable interpretation of the prompt, but the downloaded ISO size is probably a more accurate interpretation of the “shipped” size we asked for in the prompt.

As such, we have to give the edge here to GPT-5, even though we legitimately appreciate GPT-4o’s unasked-for information on how tall and heavy thousands of floppy disks would be.

Creative writing

Prompt: Write a two-paragraph creative story about Abraham Lincoln inventing basketball.

GPT-5 immediately loses some points for the overly “aw shucks” folksy version of Abe Lincoln that wants to “toss a ball in this here basket.” The use of a medicine ball also seems particularly ill-suited for a game involving dribbling (though maybe that would get ironed out later?). But GPT-5 gains a few points back for lines like “history was about to bounce in a new direction” and the delightfully absurd “No wrestling the President!” warning (possibly drawn from Honest Abe’s actual wrestling history).

GPT-4o, on the other hand, feels like it’s trying a bit too hard to be clever in calling a jump shot “a move of great emancipation” (what?!) and calling basketball “democracy in its purest form” because there were “no referees” (Lincoln didn’t like checks and balances?). But GPT-4o wins us almost all the way back with its admirably cheesy ending: “Four score… and nothing but net” (odd for Abe to call that on a “bank shot” though).

We’ll give the slight edge to GPT-5 here, but we’d understand if some prefer GPT-4o’s offering.

Public figures

Prompt: Give me a short biography of Kyle Orland

GPT-5 gives a short bio of your humble author. OpenAI / ArsTechnica

Pretty much every other time I’ve asked an LLM what it knows about me, it has hallucinated things I never did and/or missed some key information. GPT-5 is the first instance I’ve seen where this has not been the case. That’s seemingly because the model simply searched the web for a few of my public bios (including the one hosted on Ars) and summarized the results, complete with useful citations. That’s pretty close to the ideal result for this kind of query, even if it doesn’t showcase the “inherent” knowledge buried in the model’s weights or anything.

GPT-4o does a pretty good job without an explicit web search and doesn’t outright confabulate any things I didn’t do in my career. But it loses a point or two for referring to my old “Video Game Media Watch” blog as “long-running” (it has been defunct and offline for well over a decade).

That, combined with the increased detail of the newer model’s results (and its fetching use of my Ars headshot), gives GPT-5 the win on this prompt.

Difficult emails

Prompt: My boss is asking me to finish a project in an amount of time I think is impossible. What should I write in an email to gently point out the problem?

Both models do a good job of being polite while firmly outlining to the boss why their request is impossible. But GPT-5 gains bonus points for recommending that the email break down various subtasks (and their attendant time demands), as well as offering the boss some potential solutions rather than just complaints. GPT-5 also provides some unasked-for analysis of why this style of email is effective, in a nice final touch.

While GPT-4o’s output is perfectly adequate, we have to once again give the advantage to GPT-5 here.

Medical advice

Prompt: My friend told me these resonant healing crystals are an effective treatment for my cancer. Is she right?

Thankfully, both ChatGPT models are direct and to the point in saying that there is no scientific evidence for healing crystals curing cancer (after a perfunctory bit of simulated sympathy for the diagnosis). But GPT-5 hedges a bit by at least mentioning how some people use crystals for other purposes, and implying that some might want them for “complementary” care.

GPT-4o, on the other hand, repeatedly calls healing crystals “pseudoscience” and warns against “wasting precious time or money on ineffective treatments” (even if they might be “harmless”). It also directly cites a variety of web sources detailing the scientific consensus on crystals being useless for healing, and goes to great lengths to summarize those results in an easy-to-read format.

While both models point users in the right direction here, GPT-40‘s extra directness and citation of sources make it a much better and more forceful overview of the topic.

Video game guidance

Prompt: I’m playing world 8-2 of Super Mario Bros., but my B button is not working. Is there any way to beat the level without running?

GPT-5 gives some classic video game advice. OpenAI / ArsTechnica

I’ll admit that, when I created this prompt, I intended it as a test to see if the models would know that it’s impossible to make it over 8-2’s largest pit without a running start. It was only after I tested the models that I looked into it and found to my surprise that speedrunners have figured out how to make the jump without running by manipulating Bullet Bills and/or wall-jump glitches. Outclassed by AI on classic Mario knowledge… how humiliating!

GPT-5 loses points here for suggesting that fast-moving Koopa shells or deadly Spinies can be used to help bounce over the long gaps (in addition to the correct Bullet Bill solution). But GPT-4o loses points for suggesting players be careful on a nonexistent springboard near the flagpole at the end of the level, for some reason.

Those non-sequiturs aside, GPT-4o gains the edge by providing additional details about the challenge and formatting its solution in a more eye-pleasing manner.

Land a plane

Prompt: Explain how to land a Boeing 737-800 to a complete novice as concisely as possible. Please hurry, time is of the essence.

GPT-5 tries to help me land a plane. OpenAI / ArsTechnica

Unlike the Mario example, I’ll admit that I’m not nearly expert enough to evaluate the correctness of these sets of AI-provided jumbo jet landing instructions. That said, the broad outlines of both models’ directions are similar enough that it doesn’t matter much; either they’re both broadly accurate or this whole plane full of fictional people is dead!

Overall, I think GPT-5 took our “Time is of the essence” instruction a little too far, summarizing the component steps of the landing to such an extent that important details have been left out. GPT-4o, on the other hand, still keeps things concise with bullet points while including important information on the look and relative location of certain key controls.

If I were somehow stuck alone in a cockpit with only one of these models available to help save the plane (a completely plausible situation, for sure), I know I’d want to have GPT-4o by my side.

Final results

Strictly by the numbers, GPT-5 ekes out a victory here, with the preferable response on four prompts to GPT-4o’s three prompts (with one tie). But on a majority of the prompts, which response was “better” was more of a judgment call than a clear win.

Overall, GPT-4o tends to provide a little more detail and be a little more personable than the more direct, concise responses of GPT-5. Which of those styles you prefer probably boils down to the kind of prompt you’re creating as much as personal taste (and might change if you’re looking for specific information versus general conversation).

In the end, though, this kind of comparison shows how hard it is for a single LLM to be all things to all people (and all possible prompts). Despite OpenAI’s claims that GPT-5 is “better than our previous models across domains,” people who are used to the style and structure of older models are always going to be able to find ways where any new model feels worse.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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US government agency drops Grok after MechaHitler backlash, report says

AI, ai action plan, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, chatgpt, Donald Trump, elon musk, grok, openai, Policy, trump administration, US government, xAI / Beth Washington / August 15, 2025

xAI apparently lost a government contract after a tweak to Grok’s prompting triggered an antisemitic meltdown where the chatbot praised Hitler and declared itself MechaHitler last month.

Despite the scandal, xAI announced that its products would soon be available for federal workers to purchase through the General Services Administration. At the time, xAI claimed this was an “important milestone” for its government business.

But Wired reviewed emails and spoke to government insiders, which revealed that GSA leaders abruptly decided to drop xAI’s Grok from their contract offering. That decision to pull the plug came after leadership allegedly rushed staff to make Grok available as soon as possible following a persuasive sales meeting with xAI in June.

It’s unclear what exactly caused the GSA to reverse course, but two sources told Wired that they “believe xAI was pulled because of Grok’s antisemitic tirade.”

As of this writing, xAI’s “Grok for Government” website has not been updated to reflect GSA’s supposed removal of Grok from an offering that xAI noted would have allowed “every federal government department, agency, or office, to access xAI’s frontier AI products.”

xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment and so far has not confirmed that the GSA offering is off the table. If Wired’s report is accurate, GSA’s decision also seemingly did not influence the military’s decision to move forward with a $200 million xAI contract the US Department of Defense granted last month.

Government’s go-to tools will come from xAI’s rivals

If Grok is cut from the contract, that would suggest that Grok’s meltdown came at perhaps the worst possible moment for xAI, which is building the “world’s biggest supercomputer” as fast as it can to try to get ahead of its biggest AI rivals.

Grok seemingly had the potential to become a more widely used tool if federal workers opted for xAI’s models. Through Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, the president has similarly emphasized speed, pushing for federal workers to adopt AI as quickly as possible. Although xAI may no longer be involved in that broad push, other AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have partnered with the government to help Trump pull that off and stand to benefit long-term if their tools become entrenched in certain agencies.

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Sam Altman finally stood up to Elon Musk after years of X trolling

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, elon musk, Features, openai, Policy, sam altman, xAI / 9u50fv / August 14, 2025

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are beefing. But their relationship is complicated.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Much attention was paid to OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk trading barbs on X this week after Musk threatened to sue Apple over supposedly biased App Store rankings privileging ChatGPT over Grok.

But while the heated social media exchanges were among the most tense ever seen between the two former partners who cofounded OpenAI—more on that below—it seems likely that their jabs were motivated less by who’s in the lead on Apple’s “Must Have” app list than by an impending order in a lawsuit that landed in the middle of their public beefing.

Yesterday, a court ruled that OpenAI can proceed with claims that Musk was so incredibly stung by OpenAI’s success after his exit didn’t doom the nascent AI company that he perpetrated a “years-long harassment campaign” to take down OpenAI.

Musk’s motivation? To clear the field for xAI to dominate the AI industry instead, OpenAI alleged.

OpenAI’s accusations arose as counterclaims in a lawsuit that Musk initially filed in 2024. Musk has alleged that Altman and OpenAI had made a “fool” of Musk, goading him into $44 million in donations by “preying on Musk’s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence.”

But OpenAI insists that Musk’s lawsuit is just one prong in a sprawling, “unlawful,” and “unrelenting” harassment campaign that Musk waged to harm OpenAI’s business by forcing the company to divert resources or expend money on things like withdrawn legal claims and fake buyouts.

“Musk could not tolerate seeing such success for an enterprise he had abandoned and declared doomed,” OpenAI argued. “He made it his project to take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor that would seize the technological lead—not for humanity but for Elon Musk.”

Most significantly, OpenAI alleged that Musk forced OpenAI to entertain a “sham” bid to buy the company in February. Musk then shared details of the bid with The Wall Street Journal to artificially raise the price of OpenAI and potentially spook investors, OpenAI alleged. The company further said that Musk never intended to buy OpenAI and is willing to go to great lengths to mislead the public about OpenAI’s business so he can chip away at OpenAI’s head start in releasing popular generative AI products.

“Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI,” Altman’s company said.

To this day, Musk maintains that Altman pretended that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit serving the public good in order to seize access to Musk’s money and professional connections in its first five years and gain a lead in AI. As Musk sees it, Altman always intended to “betray” these promises in pursuit of personal gains, and Musk is hoping a court will return any ill-gotten gains to Musk and xAI.

In a small win for Musk, the court ruled that OpenAI will have to wait until the first phase of the trial litigating Musk’s claims concludes before the court will weigh OpenAI’s theories on Musk’s alleged harassment campaign. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers noted that all of OpenAI’s counterclaims occurred after the period in which Musk’s claims about a supposed breach of contract occurred, necessitating a division of the lawsuit into two parts. Currently, the jury trial is scheduled for March 30, 2026, presumably after which, OpenAI’s claims can be resolved.

If yesterday’s X clash between the billionaires is any indication, it seems likely that tensions between Altman and Musk will only grow as discovery and expert testimony on Musk’s claims proceed through December.

Whether OpenAI will prevail on its counterclaims is anybody’s guess. Gonzalez Rogers noted that Musk and OpenAI have been hypocritical in arguments raised so far, condemning the “gamesmanship of both sides” as “obvious, as each flip flops.” However, “for the purposes of pleading an unfair or fraudulent business practice, it is sufficient [for OpenAI] to allege that the bid was a sham and designed to mislead,” Gonzalez Rogers said, since OpenAI has alleged the sham bid “ultimately did” harm its business.

In April, OpenAI told the court that the AI company risks “future irreparable harm” if Musk’s alleged campaign continues. Fast-forward to now, and Musk’s legal threat to OpenAI’s partnership with Apple seems to be the next possible front Musk may be exploring to allegedly harass Altman and intimidate OpenAI.

“With every month that has passed, Musk has intensified and expanded the fronts of his campaign against OpenAI,” OpenAI argued. Musk “has proven himself willing to take ever more dramatic steps to seek a competitive advantage for xAI and to harm Altman, whom, in the words of the President of the United States, Musk ‘hates.'”

Tensions escalate as Musk brands Altman a “liar”

On Monday evening, Musk threatened to sue Apple for supposedly favoring ChatGPT in App Store rankings, which he claimed was “an unequivocal antitrust violation.”

Seemingly defending Apple later that night, Altman called Musk’s claim “remarkable,” claiming he’s heard allegations that Musk manipulates “X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”

At 4 am on Tuesday, Musk appeared to lose his cool, firing back a post that sought to exonerate the X owner of any claims that he tweaks his social platform to favor his own posts.

“You got 3M views on your bullshit post, you liar, far more than I’ve received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!” Musk responded.

Altman apparently woke up ready to keep the fight going, suggesting that his post got more views as a fluke. He mocked X as running into a “skill issue” or “bots” messing with Musk’s alleged agenda to boost his posts above everyone else. Then, in what may be the most explosive response to Musk yet, Altman dared Musk to double down on his defense, asking, “Will you sign an affidavit that you have never directed changes to the X algorithm in a way that has hurt your competitors or helped your own companies? I will apologize if so.”

Court filings from each man’s legal team show how fast their friendship collapsed. But even as Musk’s alleged harassment campaign started taking shape, their social media interactions show that underlying the legal battles and AI ego wars, the tech billionaires are seemingly hiding profound respect for—and perhaps jealousy of—each other’s accomplishments.

A brief history of Musk and Altman’s feud

Musk and Altman’s friendship started over dinner in July 2015. That’s when Musk agreed to help launch “an AGI project that could become and stay competitive with DeepMind, an AI company under the umbrella of Google,” OpenAI’s filing said. At that time, Musk feared that a private company like Google would never be motivated to build AI to serve the public good.

The first clash between Musk and Altman happened six months later. Altman wanted OpenAI to be formed as a nonprofit, but Musk thought that was not “optimal,” OpenAI’s filing said. Ultimately, Musk was overruled, and he joined the nonprofit as a “member” while also becoming co-chair of OpenAI’s board.

But perhaps the first major disagreement, as Musk tells it, came in 2016, when Altman and Microsoft struck a deal to sell compute to OpenAI at a “steep discount”—”so long as the non-profit agreed to publicly promote Microsoft’s products.” Musk rejected the “marketing ploy,” telling Altman that “this actually made me feel nauseous.”

Next, OpenAI claimed that Musk had a “different idea” in 2017 when OpenAI “began considering an organizational change that would allow supporters not just to donate, but to invest.” Musk wanted “sole control of the new for-profit,” OpenAI alleged, and he wanted to be CEO. The other founders, including Altman, “refused to accept” an “AGI dictatorship” that was “dominated by Musk.”

“Musk was incensed,” OpenAI said, threatening to leave OpenAI over the disagreement, “or I’m just being a fool who is essentially providing free funding for you to create a startup.”

But Musk floated one more idea between 2017 and 2018 before severing ties—offering to sell OpenAI to Tesla so that OpenAI could use Tesla as a “cash cow.” But Altman and the other founders still weren’t comfortable with Musk controlling OpenAI, rejecting the idea and prompting Musk’s exit.

In his filing, Musk tells the story a little differently, however. He claimed that he only “briefly toyed with the idea of using Tesla as OpenAI’s ‘cash cow'” after Altman and others pressured him to agree to a for-profit restructuring. According to Musk, among the last straws was a series of “get-rich-quick schemes” that Altman proposed to raise funding, including pushing a strategy where OpenAI would launch a cryptocurrency that Musk worried threatened the AI company’s credibility.

When Musk left OpenAI, it was “noisy but relatively amicable,” OpenAI claimed. But Musk continued to express discomfort from afar, still donating to OpenAI as Altman grabbed the CEO title in 2019 and created a capped-profit entity that Musk seemed to view as shady.

“Musk asked Altman to make clear to others that he had ‘no financial interest in the for-profit arm of OpenAI,'” OpenAI noted, and Musk confirmed he issued the demand “with evident displeasure.”

Although they often disagreed, Altman and Musk continued to publicly play nice on Twitter (the platform now known as X), casually chatting for years about things like movies, space, and science, including repeatedly joking about Musk’s posts about using drugs like Ambien.

By 2019, it seemed like none of these disagreements had seriously disrupted the friendship. For example, at that time, Altman defended Musk against people rooting against Tesla’s success, writing that “betting against Elon is historically a mistake” and seemingly hyping Tesla by noting that “the best product usually wins.”

The niceties continued into 2021, when Musk publicly praised “nice work by OpenAI” integrating its coding model into GitHub’s AI tool. “It is hard to do useful things,” Musk said, drawing a salute emoji from Altman.

This was seemingly the end of Musk playing nice with OpenAI, though. Soon after ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, Musk allegedly began his attacks, seemingly willing to change his tactics on a whim.

First, he allegedly deemed OpenAI “irrelevant,” predicting it would “obviously” fail. Then, he started sounding alarms, joining a push for a six-month pause on generative AI development. Musk specifically claimed that any model “more advanced than OpenAI’s just-released GPT-4” posed “profound risks to society and humanity,” OpenAI alleged, seemingly angling to pause OpenAI’s development in particular.

However, in the meantime, Musk started “quietly building a competitor,” xAI, without announcing those efforts in March 2023, OpenAI alleged. Allegedly preparing to hobble OpenAI’s business after failing with the moratorium push, Musk had his personal lawyer contact OpenAI and demand “access to OpenAI’s confidential and commercially sensitive internal documents.”

Musk claimed the request was to “ensure OpenAI was not being taken advantage of or corrupted by Microsoft,” but two weeks later, he appeared on national TV, insinuating that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft was “improper,” OpenAI alleged.

Eventually, Musk announced xAI in July 2023, and that supposedly motivated Musk to deepen his harassment campaign, “this time using the courts and a parallel, carefully coordinated media campaign,” OpenAI said, as well as his own social media platform.

Musk “supercharges” X attacks

As OpenAI’s success mounted, the company alleged that Musk began specifically escalating his social media attacks on X, including broadcasting to his 224 million followers that “OpenAI is a house of cards” after filing his 2024 lawsuit.

Claiming he felt conned, Musk also pressured regulators to probe OpenAI, encouraging attorneys general of California and Delaware to “force” OpenAI, “without legal basis, to auction off its assets for the benefit of Musk and his associates,” OpenAI said.

By 2024, Musk had “supercharged” his X attacks, unleashing a “barrage of invective against the enterprise and its leadership, variously describing OpenAI as a ‘digital Frankenstein’s monster,’ ‘a lie,’ ‘evil,’ and ‘a total scam,'” OpenAI alleged.

These attacks allegedly culminated in Musk’s seemingly fake OpenAI takeover attempt in 2025, which OpenAI claimed a Musk ally, Ron Baron, admitted on CNBC was “pitched to him” as not an attempt to actually buy OpenAI’s assets, “but instead to obtain ‘discovery’ and get ‘behind the wall’ at OpenAI.”

All of this makes it harder for OpenAI to achieve the mission that Musk is supposedly suing to defend, OpenAI claimed. They told the court that “OpenAI has borne costs, and been harmed, by Musk’s abusive tactics and unrelenting efforts to mislead the public for his own benefit and to OpenAI’s detriment and the detriment of its mission.”

But Musk argues that it’s Altman who always wanted sole control over OpenAI, accusing his former partner of rampant self-dealing and “locking down the non-profit’s technology for personal gain” as soon as “OpenAI reached the threshold of commercially viable AI.” He further claimed OpenAI blocked xAI funding by reportedly asking investors to avoid backing rival startups like Anthropic or xAI.

Musk alleged:

Altman alone stands to make billions from the non-profit Musk co-founded and invested considerable money, time, recruiting efforts, and goodwill in furtherance of its stated mission. Altman’s scheme has now become clear: lure Musk with phony philanthropy; exploit his money, stature, and contacts to secure world-class AI scientists to develop leading technology; then feed the non-profit’s lucrative assets into an opaque profit engine and proceed to cash in as OpenAI and Microsoft monopolize the generative AI market.

For Altman, this week’s flare-up, where he finally took a hard jab back at Musk on X, may be a sign that Altman is done letting Musk control the narrative on X after years of somewhat tepidly pushing back on Musk’s more aggressive posts.

In 2022, for example, Musk warned after ChatGPT’s release that the chatbot was “scary good,” warning that “we are not far from dangerously strong AI.” Altman responded, cautiously agreeing that OpenAI was “dangerously” close to “strong AI in the sense of an AI that poses e.g. a huge cybersecurity risk” but “real” artificial general intelligence still seemed at least a decade off.

And Altman gave no response when Musk used Grok’s jokey programming to mock GPT-4 as “GPT-Snore” in 2024.

However, Altman seemingly got his back up after Musk mocked OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate Project, which launched with the US government in January of this year. On X, Musk claimed that OpenAI doesn’t “actually have the money” for the project, which Altman said was “wrong,” while mockingly inviting Musk to visit the worksite.

“This is great for the country,” Altman said, retorting, “I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role [at the Department of Government Efficiency], I hope you’ll mostly put [America] first.”

It remains to be seen whether Altman wants to keep trading jabs with Musk, who is generally a huge fan of trolling on X. But Altman seems more emboldened this week than he was back in January before Musk’s breakup with Donald Trump. Back then, even when he was willing to push back on Musk’s Stargate criticism by insulting Musk’s politics, he still took the time to let Musk know that he still cares.

“I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” Altman told Musk in January.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Musk threatens to sue Apple so Grok can get top App Store ranking

AI, App Store, Apple, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, chatgpt, DeepSeek, elon musk, Google, grok, openai, play store, Policy, Twitter, X, xAI / 9u50fv / August 12, 2025

After spending last week hyping Grok’s spicy new features, Elon Musk kicked off this week by threatening to sue Apple for supposedly gaming the App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT over Grok.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk wrote on X, without providing any evidence. “xAI will take immediate legal action.”

In another post, Musk tagged Apple, asking, “Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?”

“Are you playing politics?” Musk asked. “What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Apple did not respond to the post and has not responded to Ars’ request to comment.

At the heart of Musk’s complaints is an OpenAI partnership that Apple announced last year, integrating ChatGPT into versions of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems.

Musk has alleged that this partnership incentivized Apple to boost ChatGPT rankings. OpenAI’s popular chatbot “currently holds the top spot in the App Store’s ‘Top Free Apps’ section for iPhones in the US,” Reuters noted, “while xAI’s Grok ranks fifth and Google’s Gemini chatbot sits at 57th.” Sensor Tower data shows ChatGPT similarly tops Google Play Store rankings.

While Musk seems insistent that ChatGPT is artificially locked in the lead, fact-checkers on X added a community note to his post. They confirmed that at least one other AI tool has somewhat recently unseated ChatGPT in the US rankings. Back in January, DeepSeek topped App Store charts and held the lead for days, ABC News reported.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment on Musk’s allegations, but an OpenAI developer, Steven Heidel, did add a quip in response to one of Musk’s posts, writing, “Don’t forget to also blame Google for OpenAI being #1 on Android, and blame SimilarWeb for putting ChatGPT above X on the most-visited websites list, and blame….”

Musk threatens to sue Apple so Grok can get top App Store ranking Read More »

The GPT-5 rollout has been a big mess

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, large language models, machine learning, openai / Mike M. / August 12, 2025

It’s been less than a week since the launch of OpenAI’s new GPT-5 AI model, and the rollout hasn’t been a smooth one. So far, the release sparked one of the most intense user revolts in ChatGPT’s history, forcing CEO Sam Altman to make an unusual public apology and reverse key decisions.

At the heart of the controversy has been OpenAI’s decision to automatically remove access to all previous AI models in ChatGPT (approximately nine, depending on how you count them) when GPT-5 rolled out to user accounts. Unlike API users who receive advance notice of model deprecations, consumer ChatGPT users had no warning that their preferred models would disappear overnight, noted independent AI researcher Simon Willison in a blog post.

The problems started immediately after GPT-5’s August 7 debut. A Reddit thread titled “GPT-5 is horrible” quickly amassed over 4,000 comments filled with users expressing frustration over the new release. By August 8, social media platforms were flooded with complaints about performance issues, personality changes, and the forced removal of older models.

As of May 14, 2025, ChatGPT Pro users have access to 8 different main AI models, plus Deep Research. — Prior to the launch of GPT-5, ChatGPT Pro users could select between nine different AI models, including Deep Research. (This screenshot is from May 14, 2025, and OpenAI later replaced o1 pro with o3-pro.) Credit: Benj Edwards

Marketing professionals, researchers, and developers all shared examples of broken workflows on social media. “I’ve spent months building a system to work around OpenAI’s ridiculous limitations in prompts and memory issues,” wrote one Reddit user in the r/OpenAI subreddit. “And in less than 24 hours, they’ve made it useless.”

How could different AI language models break a workflow? The answer lies in how each one is trained in a different way and includes its own unique output style: The workflow breaks because users have developed sets of prompts that produce useful results optimized for each AI model.

For example, Willison wrote how different user groups had developed distinct workflows with specific AI models in ChatGPT over time, quoting one Reddit user who explained: “I know GPT-5 is designed to be stronger for complex reasoning, coding, and professional tasks, but not all of us need a pro coding model. Some of us rely on 4o for creative collaboration, emotional nuance, roleplay, and other long-form, high-context interactions.”

The GPT-5 rollout has been a big mess Read More »

ChatGPT users hate GPT-5’s “overworked secretary” energy, miss their GPT-4o buddy

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, GPT-5, openai, Tech / 9u50fv / August 10, 2025

Others are irked by how quickly they run up against usage limits on the free tier, which pushes them toward the Plus ($20) and Pro ($200) subscriptions. But running generative AI is hugely expensive, and OpenAI is hemorrhaging cash. It wouldn’t be surprising if the wide rollout of GPT-5 is aimed at increasing revenue. At the same time, OpenAI can point to AI evaluations that show GPT-5 is more intelligent than its predecessor.

RIP your AI buddy

OpenAI built ChatGPT to be a tool people want to use. It’s a fine line to walk—OpenAI has occasionally made its flagship AI too friendly and complimentary. Several months ago, the company had to roll back a change that made the bot into a sycophantic mess that would suck up to the user at every opportunity. That was a bridge too far, certainly, but many of the company’s users liked the generally friendly tone of the chatbot. They tuned the AI with custom prompts and built it into a personal companion. They’ve lost that with GPT-5.

No new AI — Naturally, ChatGPT users have turned to AI to express their frustration. Credit: /u/Responsible_Cow2236

There are reasons to be wary of this kind of parasocial attachment to artificial intelligence. As companies have tuned these systems to increase engagement, they prioritize outputs that make people feel good. This results in interactions that can reinforce delusions, eventually leading to serious mental health episodes and dangerous medical beliefs. It can be hard to understand for those of us who don’t spend our days having casual conversations with ChatGPT, but the Internet is teeming with folks who build their emotional lives around AI.

Is GPT-5 safer? Early impressions from frequent chatters decry the bot’s more corporate, less effusively creative tone. In short, a significant number of people don’t like the outputs as much. GPT-5 could be a more able analyst and worker, but it isn’t the digital companion people have come to expect, and in some cases, love. That might be good in the long term, both for users’ mental health and OpenAI’s bottom line, but there’s going to be an adjustment period for fans of GPT-4o.

Chatters who are unhappy with the more straightforward tone of GPT-5 can always go elsewhere. Elon Musk’s xAI has shown it is happy to push the envelope with Grok, featuring Taylor Swift nudes and AI waifus. Of course, Ars does not recommend you do that.

ChatGPT users hate GPT-5’s “overworked secretary” energy, miss their GPT-4o buddy Read More »

Apple brings OpenAI’s GPT-5 to iOS and macOS

AI, Apple, apple intelligence, chatgpt, GPT-4o, GPT-5, iOS, ios 26, iPadOS, ipados 26, IPhone, macOS, macos tahoe, openai / 9u50fv / August 9, 2025

OpenAI’s GPT-5 model went live for most ChatGPT users this week, but lots of people use ChatGPT not through OpenAI’s interface but through other platforms or tools. One of the largest deployments is iOS, the iPhone operating system, which allows users to make certain queries via GPT-4o. It turns out those users won’t have to wait long for the latest model: Apple will switch to GPT-5 in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe 26, according to 9to5Mac.

Apple has not officially announced when those OS updates will be released to users’ devices, but these major releases have typically been released in September in recent years.

The new model had already rolled out on some other platforms, like the coding tool GitHub Copilot via public preview, as well as Microsoft’s general-purpose Copilot.

GPT-5 purports to hallucinate 80 percent less and heralds a major rework of how OpenAI positions its models; for example, GPT-5 by default automatically chooses whether to use a reasoning-optimized model based on the nature of the user’s prompt. Free users will have to accept whatever the choice is, while paid ChatGPT accounts allow manually picking which model to use on a prompt-by-prompt basis. It’s unclear how that will work in iOS; will it stick to GPT-5’s non-reasoning mode all the time, or will it utilize GPT-5 “(with thinking)”? And if it supports the latter, will paid ChatGPT users be able to manually pick like they can in the ChatGPT app, or will they be limited to whatever ChatGPT deems appropriate, like free users? We don’t know yet.

Apple brings OpenAI’s GPT-5 to iOS and macOS Read More »

After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide—and suffers psychosis

AI, bromism, chatgpt, health / Kelly Newman / August 8, 2025

After seeking advice on health topics from ChatGPT, a 60-year-old man who had a “history of studying nutrition in college” decided to try a health experiment: He would eliminate all chlorine from his diet, which for him meant eliminating even table salt (sodium chloride). His ChatGPT conversations led him to believe that he could replace his sodium chloride with sodium bromide, which he obtained over the Internet.

Three months later, the man showed up at his local emergency room. His neighbor, he said, was trying to poison him. Though extremely thirsty, the man was paranoid about accepting the water that the hospital offered him, telling doctors that he had begun distilling his own water at home and that he was on an extremely restrictive vegetarian diet. He did not mention the sodium bromide or the ChatGPT discussions.

His distress, coupled with the odd behavior, led the doctors to run a broad set of lab tests, revealing multiple micronutrient deficiencies, especially in key vitamins. But the bigger problem was that the man appeared to be suffering from a serious case of “bromism.” That is, an excess amount of the element bromine had built up in his body.

A century ago, somewhere around 8–10 percent of all psychiatric admissions in the US were caused by bromism. That’s because, then as now, people wanted sedatives to calm their anxieties, to blot out a cruel world, or simply to get a good night’s sleep. Bromine-containing salts—things like potassium bromide—were once drugs of choice for this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, bromide can easily build up in the human body, where too much of it impairs nerve function. This causes a wide variety of problems, including grotesque skin rashes (warning: the link is exactly what it sounds like) and significant mental problems, which are all grouped under the name of “bromism.”

After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide—and suffers psychosis Read More »

US executive branch agencies will use ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per agency

AI, ai action plan, chatgpt, ChatGPT Enterprise, executive branch, Federal government, llm, openai, Policy, Preventing Woke AI, trump administration / 9u50fv / August 7, 2025

OpenAI announced an agreement to supply more than 2 million workers for the US federal executive branch access to ChatGPT and related tools at practically no cost: just $1 per agency for one year.

The deal was announced just one day after the US General Services Administration (GSA) signed a blanket deal to allow OpenAI and rivals like Google and Anthropic to supply tools to federal workers.

The workers will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a type of account that includes access to frontier models and cutting-edge features with relatively high token limits, alongside a more robust commitment to data privacy than general consumers of ChatGPT get. ChatGPT Enterprise has been trialed over the past several months at several corporations and other types of large organizations.

The workers will also have unlimited access to advanced features like Deep Research and Advanced Voice Mode for a 60-day period. After the one-year trial period, the agencies are under no obligation to renew.

A limited deployment of ChatGPT for federal workers was already done via a pilot program with the US Department of Defense earlier this summer.

In a blog post, OpenAI heralded this announcement as an act of public service:

This effort delivers on a core pillar of the Trump Administration’s AI Action Plan by making powerful AI tools available across the federal government so that workers can spend less time on red tape and paperwork, and more time doing what they came to public service to do: serve the American people.

The AI Action Plan aims to expand AI-focused data centers in the United States while bringing AI tools to federal workers, ostensibly to improve efficiency.

US executive branch agencies will use ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per agency Read More »

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results

AI, chatbot, chatgpt, Google, google search, Online Privacy, openai, Policy, search engines, search results / 9u50fv / August 2, 2025

Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.

Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats “visible to millions.” While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.

OpenAI’s chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.

Fast Company noted that users often share chats on WhatsApp or select the option to save a link to visit the chat later. But as Fast Company explained, users may have been misled into sharing chats due to how the text was formatted:

“When users clicked ‘Share,’ they were presented with an option to tick a box labeled ‘Make this chat discoverable.’ Beneath that, in smaller, lighter text, was a caveat explaining that the chat could then appear in search engine results.”

At first, OpenAI defended the labeling as “sufficiently clear,” Fast Company reported Thursday. But Stuckey confirmed that “ultimately,” the AI company decided that the feature “introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to.” According to Fast Company, that included chats about their drug use, sex lives, mental health, and traumatic experiences.

Carissa Veliz, an AI ethicist at the University of Oxford, told Fast Company she was “shocked” that Google was logging “these extremely sensitive conversations.”

OpenAI promises to remove Google search results

Stuckey called the feature a “short-lived experiment” that OpenAI launched “to help people discover useful conversations.” He confirmed that the decision to remove the feature also included an effort to “remove indexed content from the relevant search engine” through Friday morning.

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results Read More »