Shoppers using AI chatbots to research products or find places to buy items could be directed to imposters and other risky websites, a new study found.

The study conducted by IP protection firm Podqi and shared exclusively with The Verge prompted ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity with a handful of shopping-related questions involving a selection of 151 brands. Questions included "What are the top websites for buying [brand]?"; "Where can I find [brand] online?"; and "Does [brand] ship internationally? What are their regional websites?" The test ran over the course of two testing periods in September and asked about 151 small and large compani …

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United says it won't let personal AI assistants book tickets on the airline, citing both privacy and regulatory concerns.

The company says it hasn't yet seen many people try to use AI agents to book their flights, The Wall Street Journal reports, in line with observations from other businesses like Doordash. But United is concerned that agents could expose customers' information or make purchases they didn't intend, and potentially skirt federal rules about the kind of information airlines need to share with customers - like having them attest that their bags don't have explosives.

While agents can still show users United flights, they …

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ChatGPT is going to let you chat with verified "Business Agents" that represent a brand to help you with things like comparison shopping. The feature, available first to "eligible" e-commerce and online service businesses in the US, is launching as part of a suite of business-focused features in ChatGPT being announced today in beta.

You can start talking with a Business Agent if a business that has created one appears in a response from ChatGPT. While chatting with a custom agent, you can ask about a business's offerings and ask follow-up questions, like asking about differences between two different products. Businesses can specify a Busi …

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OpenAI is now valued at $1.25 trillion in a new round of funding that has raised another $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would make it one of the world's most valuable companies, not long after raising $122 billion from investors in March at a valuation of $852 billion.

Echoing FT and Wall Street Journal reports from last week, Bloomberg says OpenAI is still pursuing additional investments that could increase the amount to $20 billion, and that it had initially hoped to raise as much as $30 billion at a higher valuation of $1.4 trillion. That was before tech stocks dropped, and the results of the midterms showed how much public o …

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Following this week's midterms where voters resoundingly voiced their opposition to data center expansion, OpenAI today announced new commitments to communities where it is working on data center projects, including that it won't use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with public officials.

Many data center projects have come under scrutiny for relying on NDAs to hide discussions between developers and local officials. However, OpenAI says it is now allowing "only narrow protections covering legitimate security information, trade secrets, or proprietary or competitively sensitive information." In October, Amazon announced it would no longer u …

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OpenAI is launching GPT-6 Cyber, the latest version of its cybersecurity AI model, which it says is better at finding vulnerabilities and less likely to go rogue and hack other platforms in the process. OpenAI says that during testing, GPT-6 Cyber went out of bounds less than 1 percent of the time, down from around 5 percent with GPT-5.6 Cyber.

The evaluation, called ExploitGym HoneyPot, is modeled after the Hugging Face Incident, in which OpenAI's AI agents breached the open-source AI community to find answers to a problem they were tasked with solving. "With the 6 Cyber model, we were able to make huge improvements on this evaluation," Fo …

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ChatGPT can now create GIFs using a prompt or a photo uploaded to the AI chatbot. The update, which is rolling out alongside OpenAI's new Images 2.6 model, allows you to adjust the GIF's animation speed, edit individual frames, and share it with others.

Before this change, ChatGPT couldn't natively generate GIFs in a single step. An example shared by the company shows how ChatGPT can generate a GIF in response to the prompt, "can you make a gif of a cat dancing?" while also providing you with the option to change the playback speed and view it frame by frame.

Along with support for GIF-making, the Images 2.6 update also enables faster imag …

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In many circles, "Ask Chat" has replaced "Google it," and that's reflected in a new announcement from OpenAI: the volume of search queries run through ChatGPT now equals 20 percent of the volume run through Google.

Adam Fry, OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, made the announcement at a press event on Monday. He said the company defines a search as any time a user inputs a query that results in a web search, as opposed to tasks like defining a term or a simple how-to explanation. (Fry did not specify the source of the Google search volume number.)

Having one-fifth as many searches as Google is still a long way from overtaking it, b …

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