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OpenAI is bringing back five-hour usage limits for ChatGPT Plus subscribers using ChatGPT Work and Codex, starting August 25, after temporarily lifting them post-GPT-5.6 launch. Plus users will now draw from their weekly quota in five-hour blocks rather than using it freely, while ChatGPT Pro subscribers remain unaffected for now.
OpenAI will restore a five-hour usage limit for Codex and ChatGPT Work on Plus subscriptions starting tomorrow, according to engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux. The cap had been temporarily suspended for several weeks, leaving only a weekly limit in place, but is now returning alongside that weekly cap. Pro subscribers on the $100 and $200 tiers will remain exempt from the five-hour restriction for the coming months.
OpenAI has launched a new ChatGPT feature that converts uploaded photos into stickers with transparent backgrounds, letting users remix images, apply styles, or generate packs from prompts. Finished stickers can be exported directly to iMessage or WhatsApp, saved to a photo library, though WhatsApp requires a minimum of three stickers per export due to Meta's platform rules.
CNET ran a side-by-side comparison of ChatGPT and Gemini's ability to interpret images, including handwritten notes scribbled on an e-ink tablet using a passage from The Hound of the Baskervilles. In this test, ChatGPT struggled to correctly transcribe the messy handwriting, misreading key phrases and producing largely inaccurate output compared to what was actually written.
OpenAI now offers a cheaper ChatGPT Go tier worldwide for users who no longer need premium features, while also retiring GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026 despite earlier restoring it due to user demand. Separately, a Defense Department deal to deploy OpenAI's models on a classified network triggered a 295 percent single-day spike in US app uninstalls, prompting OpenAI to amend the agreement to bar domestic surveillance uses.
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Work, a $20/month product adapted from its Codex coding tool, aimed at giving white-collar workers—not just software engineers—access to AI agents that can autonomously complete multistep tasks. To function effectively, the tool requires deep access to users' digital lives, including email, Slack, phone data and apps like Notion and Figma, as demonstrated by OpenAI's own lead engineer who granted it broad control over his accounts.
Cheshire Academy, a Connecticut boarding school, decided against forcing a single AI platform on its staff and instead trained teachers on general principles for using generative AI responsibly. As a result, instructors now mix tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the education-focused MagicSchool to help draft lesson plans and grading rubrics. Staff training emphasized both prompt-writing skills and the technology's tendency toward inaccurate or biased output.
AI chatbots like Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude often store user conversations on company servers and use that data by default to train future AI models. Users can disable this training option and delete past activity, though turning off tracking does not automatically erase previously stored data. For Gemini specifically, users must disable both Google's Web & App Activity and Gemini's own Activity setting, then manually delete existing records.
OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Work, a version of its assistant that goes beyond answering questions to actually performing multi-step tasks like browsing the web, managing files, and completing sequences of actions autonomously. The feature is available to both free and paid ChatGPT users, though paid tiers unlock greater capacity for agentic tasks.
Researchers highlight a stark 'data efficiency gap': large language models require orders of magnitude more text than a human child hears to master language basics. Stanford's Michael Frank and Georgetown's Ethan Wilcox note that while frontier models train on trillions of tokens, children pick up language fundamentals from a fraction of that input within their first year or two of life. Scientists are studying how kids achieve this to both understand human cognition and potentially inform more efficient AI training methods.
Pew Research analyzed 500,000 English-language webpages using an AI detection tool and found that 10% of all sampled pages showed significant signs of AI authorship. Among pages published after ChatGPT's release, that figure jumps to more than one-third, with .com domains showing roughly double the AI-signal rate of .org sites and ten times that of .edu or .gov domains.
OpenAI has rolled out a version of ChatGPT tailored for teenage users, prompting renewed scrutiny over how the company safeguards younger users from harmful content. Critics and safety advocates are questioning whether the age-specific controls are sufficient given ongoing concerns about AI chatbots' interactions with minors.