Jimmy Ba is the latest co-founder to leave xAI, and like the five who left before him, he’s full of praise for the company and predicts massive AI breakthroughs ahead. Yet somehow, half of xAI’s twelve founding members have still walked out the door.
OpenAI has upgraded Deep Research in ChatGPT. The feature now runs on the new GPT-5.2 model, as OpenAI announced on X. A key addition is that users can connect apps to ChatGPT and—potentially very useful—search specific websites. The search progress can also be tracked in real time, interrupted with questions, or supplemented with new sources. Results can now be displayed as full-screen reports.
Until now, Deep Research—which launched in 2025—ran on o3 and o4 mini models. OpenAI considers it the first "AI agent" in ChatGPT, since the system independently kicks off multi-stage web searches based on the user's query before generating a response.
That said, even web searches don't protect against generative AI errors, and the longer the generated text, the higher the risk of mistakes. In everyday use, targeted search queries with capable reasoning models are often more reliable. Web search significantly reduces hallucination rates overall, but doesn't eliminate them.
Chinese robotaxi operator Pony AI and Toyota have kicked off commercial production of a self-driving electric car. The first of 1,000 fully electric, autonomous Toyota bZ4X compact SUVs has rolled off the assembly line at a joint venture plant run by Toyota and the Guangzhou Automobile Group. The vehicles are meant to help Pony AI hit its goal of expanding its robotaxi fleet to more than 3,000 cars by the end of the year. The bZ4X is one of three models Pony AI is deploying with its latest autonomous driving software across major Chinese cities.
The vehicles run on Pony AI's autonomous driving system, rated at SAE Level 4. That means the car drives itself completely within designated areas - no human needs to sit behind the wheel, hold the steering wheel, or watch the road. There are still limitations, though, such as restrictions on operating zones or weather conditions.
Even though the technology enables driverless operation, human support is still part of the equation. Right now, one person oversees roughly 30 vehicles and can step in if something goes wrong.
Pony AI competes with other Chinese robotaxi companies like Baidu and WeRide.
OpenAI is rolling out ads in ChatGPT for users in the United States. The test targets logged-in adult users on the free and "Go" tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education plans remain ad-free. Free-tier users can opt out of advertising, but doing so reduces their daily message allowance.
OpenAI says the decision comes down to high infrastructure costs. The company stresses that ads don't influence ChatGPT's responses, and conversations stay private. Which ad a user sees depends on the conversation topic, previous chats, and interactions.
Users under 18 won't see any ads, and ads won't appear around sensitive topics like health or politics. Users can hide individual ads, delete their ad data, and adjust personalization settings. Advertisers get aggregated performance statistics but have no access to chat logs or personal data, OpenAI says.
What will always remain true: ChatGPT’s answers remain independent and unbiased, conversations stay private, and people keep meaningful control over their experience.
Putting ads in chatbots is controversial, since the potential for manipulation is greater than with traditional search engines. OpenAI says it will keep ads clearly separated from content. Long term, the company plans to roll out additional ad formats.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees in an internal Slack message that ChatGPT is once again growing by more than ten percent per month, CNBC reports. The last official number was 800 million weekly users in January 2026.
Altman also said an updated chat model for ChatGPT is set to ship this week. It could be the chat variant of GPT 5.3, which OpenAI released last week as the coding-focused version Codex. The model scores particularly well on agent coding benchmarks and is 25 percent faster, according to OpenAI.
The Codex coding product has grown roughly 50 percent in just one week, according to Altman (60% "Codex user", now confirmed via X), who called the growth "insane." It competes directly with Anthropic's popular Claude Code. OpenAI's new Codex desktop app in particular is likely to expand gradually beyond coding use cases, following a similar path to Anthropic's Cowork.
Claude Opus 4.6 is the new top-ranked AI model, at least until Artificial Analysis finishes benchmarking OpenAI's Codex 5.3, which will likely pull ahead in coding. Anthropic's latest model leads the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a composite of ten tests covering coding, agent tasks, and scientific reasoning, with first-place finishes in agent-based work tasks, terminal coding, and physics research problems.
Running the complete test suite costs $2,486, more than the $2,304 required for GPT-5.2 at maximum reasoning performance. Opus 4.6 consumed roughly 58 million output tokens, twice as many as Opus 4.5 but significantly fewer than GPT-5.2's 130 million. The higher total price comes down to Anthropic's token pricing of $5 and $25 per million input and output tokens, respectively.
Opus 4.6 is available through the Claude.ai apps and via Anthropic's API, Google Vertex, AWS Bedrock, and Microsoft Azure.
Anthropic just launched a new fast mode for Claude, and the pricing is steep: the "Fast Mode" for Opus 4.6 costs up to six times the standard rate. In return, Anthropic says the model responds 2.5 times faster at the same quality level. The mode is built for live debugging, rapid code iterations, and time-critical tasks. For longer autonomous runs, batch processing/CI-CD pipelines, and cost-sensitive workloads, Anthropic says you're better off sticking with standard mode.
| Standard | Fast mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Input ≤ 200K tokens | $5 / MTok | $30 / MTok |
| Input > 200K tokens | $10 / MTok | $60 / MTok |
| Output ≤ 200K tokens | $25 / MTok | $150 / MTok |
| Output > 200K tokens | $37,50 / MTok | $225 / MTok |
Fast Mode can be toggled on in Claude Code with /fast and works across Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Figma, and Windsurf. There's a 50 percent introductory discount running until February 16. The mode isn't available through Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or Microsoft Azure Foundry. Anthropic plans to expand API access down the line, interested developers can sign up for a waiting list.
