ChatGPT is set to reach 700 million weekly users this week, according to Nick Turley, App Product Manager at OpenAI. That's up from 500 million at the end of March and four times higher than last year. In addition, OpenAI now counts 5 million paying business users, up from 3 million in June, as more enterprises and educators turn to AI tools. The company recently raised $8.3 million in funding and is preparing to launch GPT-5.
Apple is working on its own AI-powered search engine, marking a shift away from its previous anti-chatbot stance.
Despite years of skepticism toward ChatGPT-style systems, Apple is now developing an internal generative search feature designed to answer user questions based on context, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The new AI team, called "Answers, Knowledge and Information" (AKI) and led by Robby Walker, is building a system that scans the web and consolidates results into a planned "Answer Engine" product. The team is also working on a standalone app, along with new backend infrastructure for Siri, Spotlight, and Safari.
This change in direction signals that Apple now sees generative search as strategically important in the AI race, and is moving to regain lost ground against Google and OpenAI.
Google's AI infrastructure is under strain as demand for its latest models increases. Product manager Logan Kilpatrick responded to complaints about the limited availability of Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Think, explaining, "the release is constrained because this is a big model and takes a boat load of compute to run, when our TPU's are already burning to keep up with massive growth on Veo, Gemini 2.5 pro, AI mode rollout to hundreds of millions, etc."
Kilpatrick addressed criticism after users pointed out that, despite strong benchmark scores, Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Think is difficult to use to use due to access restrictions. Even Ultra subscribers can only make a handful of requests per day as the system struggles to keep up with demand.
Wan2.2 A14B now tops the rankings for open source video models, according to Artificial Analysis. It ranks seventh for text-to-video and fourteenth for image-to-video, with the lower placement in the latter likely due to its 16 frames per second output compared to 24 fps in some competitors. Among open models, Wan2.2 A14B leads the field, but it still trails behind closed models like Veo 3 and Seedance 1.0 in overall performance. Pricing, however, is often much lower depending on the provider.
Uber Eats now manipulates food images using generative AI.
Uber Eats is now using generative AI to identify and enhance low-quality food photos on its menus. The technology does more than just adjust lighting, resolution, or cropping. It can move food onto different plates or backgrounds, and even modify the food itself - making portions look bigger or digitally filling in gaps for a more polished look.
This approach goes further than traditional retouching or generic stock photos. The AI is capable of generating convincing images of dishes that, in some cases, never actually existed in this form.
