Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told G20 finance ministers that a collapse in AI sector growth could trigger a market correction that ripples across the world economy. He pointed to high stock valuations, rising investor leverage, and growing financial ties between AI firms and major tech companies as factors that could magnify such a shock, while also flagging cyber security risks from coordinated attacks on multiple firms at once.
bbc.co.uk
· 2026-08-31
The European Commission classified OpenAI's ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox as very large online platforms under the Digital Services Act after each surpassed 45 million monthly EU users. This status brings tougher requirements including removing illegal content and safeguarding minors' privacy and security, with a deadline of end of December to comply.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in a Time interview that public sentiment has turned sharply against AI and the data centers powering it. Communities nationwide are protesting roughly $130 billion in data center construction, citing strained water supplies, rising living costs and pollution, forming a bipartisan opposition movement. Altman also revealed he's faced personal threats, including a molotov cocktail thrown at his home and a shooting, linked to anti-AI safety activism.
futurism.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI announced its advertising unit, launched within ChatGPT in February, now generates $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate. The ads are now live in over 40 countries, with self-service access expanding Monday to India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, primarily reaching free-tier and Go subscription users.
cnbc.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI confirmed a partial outage of ChatGPT Work beginning around 11:04 AM ET on Monday, August 31, causing elevated errors and latency for users on multiple subscription tiers. Plus subscribers appear hit hardest, with Work mode unavailable for some, leaving them unable to start or continue tasks. As of 12:02 PM ET, OpenAI said the issue was still unresolved and a fix was in progress.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-08-31
A ZDNET contributor shares how they've been using ChatGPT Work, OpenAI's agentic AI tool, to handle five recurring small-business tasks, including sorting through PR email correspondence from OpenAI and other outlets. The writer describes connecting Gmail to the tool only temporarily for large tasks and disconnecting afterward as a security precaution, while noting prompts often need refinement to get useful results.
zdnet.com
· 2026-08-31
An international research team published a paper in AI & Society introducing the concept of 'robotoid humanness,' arguing that frequent interaction with AI chatbots in customer service settings could push people toward more machine-like patterns of speech and behavior. The researchers describe this as a two-way process where bots increasingly mimic human traits while humans adapt to communicate in ways that are more legible to machines. The framework outlines three stages of this shift but has not yet been tested empirically.
futurism.com
· 2026-08-31
The European Commission has classified OpenAI's ChatGPT, along with Reddit and Roblox, as Very Large Online Platforms/Search Engines under the Digital Services Act, since each surpasses 45 million average monthly EU users. This designation subjects them to stricter obligations covering ad targeting, algorithmic transparency, and protections for minors. The three companies have until the end of December 2026 to comply.
theverge.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI announced it will stop supplying its AI models to Cursor, the coding tool acquired by Elon Musk's SpaceX, citing concerns the company won't abide by its usage terms based on past disputes with Musk's businesses. Cursor co-founder Michael Truell said talks are underway to resolve the issue, while Anthropic said it would boost compute support for its Claude models within Cursor. Musk dismissed the move on X, calling Altman and Brockman 'untrustworthy' and repeating claims they 'stole an open source nonprofit.'
slashdot.org
· 2026-08-31
SB Energy, a SoftBank-owned data-center developer, offered OpenAI a discount valued at $5.5 billion as part of an agreement to build data-center capacity together. The concession strengthens the financial relationship between SB Energy and OpenAI as they work to develop new infrastructure projects.
wsj.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on July 9th as a paid feature for $20+/month subscribers, and it actually comes in two forms: a cloud-based version accessible via chatgpt.com and mobile apps, and a local version built into the desktop app (formerly Codex) that can access files and run programs on a user's computer. The cloud version, described as the more interesting of the two, adds capabilities not found in standard ChatGPT Chat, including selection among multiple models and reasoning-effort levels.
simonwillison.net
· 2026-08-31
Elon Musk announced on X that SpaceX will begin manufacturing turbine blades and vanes internally to increase production of natural gas turbine generators used to power AI data centers. The move addresses a supply bottleneck as data center operators increasingly rely on portable gas turbines to bypass slow grid connections, with blade casting alone typically taking 60 to 90 weeks per batch. Musk said SpaceX and Tesla are also each targeting 100GW/year of solar capacity, but gas turbines remain necessary to bridge power needs in the near term.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-30
GoKawiil