ChatGPT users research products but won't buy there, forcing OpenAI to rethink its commerce strategy
OpenAI wanted to turn ChatGPT into a shopping destination, but only about a dozen retailers signed up and users weren’t buying. Now the company is handing off purchases to app partners like Instacart and Target.
Google is expanding its AI-powered search into the workplace. The company has rolled out the "Canvas" feature in AI mode for all users in the US. Canvas is a workspace built into Google's chat systems that lets users organize projects and plans over time. ChatGPT and Claude offer similar functionality.
The update also adds support for creative writing and coding tasks. Users can create documents or build interactive tools and dashboards directly within search: just type in a prompt, and Google generates a working prototype that pulls together current web information and data from Google's Knowledge Graph. Results can be tested, code viewed, and everything refined through chat. The feature is available now at google.com/ai in the US.
With Canvas, AI mode is looking more and more like the Gemini app. Google seems to be gradually unifying its chat offerings, adding features that blur the line between search and a full AI assistant. At some point, AI mode and Gemini could merge into a single product, giving Google its own direct equivalent to ChatGPT.
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, xAI and OpenAI signed a voluntary pledge at the White House to cover the electricity costs of their data centers themselves. The commitment is not legally binding. The goal is to prevent the massive energy demand of AI data centers from driving up electricity bills for households and small businesses, Reuters reports.
President Trump first announced the so-called "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" during his State of the Union Address. The companies promise to secure their own power sources or expand existing plants and cover grid upgrade costs.
Critics like Jon Gordon of Advanced Energy United doubt that new power plants can be built fast enough to relieve the grids, according to Reuters. Especially since the administration is focusing on natural gas rather than faster-to-build solar and wind energy. The initiative comes ahead of the November midterm elections, where rising energy costs are a key voter concern.
Yann LeCun wants to replace the AGI concept with "Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence"
A new paper by researchers at Columbia University and NYU, including Yann LeCun, argues that AGI is a flawed concept. Human intelligence is not general, they say, but specialized. Instead, they propose the term “Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence”.
Apple Music is rolling out Transparency Tags that let labels and distributors flag AI-generated content across four categories: Artwork, Tracks, Compositions, and Music Videos.Music Business Worldwide reported the news, citing a newsletter to industry partners. The tags are optional for now but will become mandatory later - putting disclosure responsibility on suppliers, not the platform.
Per Apple's spec, labeling is required when AI generates a "material portion" of the content. The "Composition" tag covers lyrics too, not just melody or instrumentation. "Artwork" applies at the album level, including animated covers, while "Track," "Composition," and "Music Video" are defined per song.
Alibaba's lead AI researcher Junyang Lin has unexpectedly resigned. Lin was the driving force behind Alibaba's Qwen model series and shaped the company's open-source strategy. According to Chinese technology portal 36Kr, several core team members followed him out the door, including Binyuan Hui (Qwen coder), Bowen Yu (post-training), and Kaixin Li (Qwen 3.5/VL). A number of younger researchers reportedly also quit on the same day.
via X
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu accepted Lin's resignation and announced a new "Foundation Model Task Force," which he will lead alongside CTO Zeming Wu and Jingren Zhou, The Information reports. The company says it plans to double down on open source and ramp up AI investments. "In technology, standing still means falling behind," Wu wrote in a memo to the team. "In technology, standing still means falling behind. Advancing foundation models is a core strategic priority for our future."
OpenAI has released its Codex app for Windows. Codex is an AI-powered coding tool that helps developers build software by running multiple agents asynchronously across projects, delegating repeatable tasks through Automations, and connecting agents to tools and workflows via Skills. Developers can review, guide, and step into agent work without losing context.
For the Windows version, OpenAI built its own sandbox that operates at the OS level with restricted tokens, file system access rights, and dedicated sandbox user accounts. This lets AI agents run directly in Windows environments like PowerShell without forcing developers to switch to WSL or virtual machines. OpenAI has published the sandbox code as open source on GitHub.
The Windows app arrives a few weeks after the Mac version, which was downloaded over a million times in its first week, according to OpenAI. More than 500,000 developers had already signed up for the Windows waiting list. OpenAI says Codex now has over 1.6 million weekly active users total. The app is available across all ChatGPT plans.
