Multiple online retailers report that Amazon’s AI-powered shopping tool displays their products on the marketplace without consent. Amazon defends the program, but criticism is mounting.
More than five percent of all messages sent through ChatGPT worldwide deal with health topics. According to a report OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios, 40 million Americans use the chatbot daily for medical questions. Users ask it to explain medical bills, compare insurance plans, or check symptoms, often because they can't get in to see a doctor right away. OpenAI spotted this trend early and marketed GPT-5 as particularly capable for these kinds of use cases.
The report shows OpenAI now handles nearly two million insurance-related questions per week. The surge came after the Trump administration let long-standing health insurance subsidies expire at the start of the new year.
Using ChatGPT for medical advice comes with serious risks. The models still hallucinate, and many users likely rely on weaker model versions without reasoning capabilities, especially when chatting directly with the AI in voice mode, which uses a lighter model for faster responses. OpenAI's newly released promotional video doesn't mention any of these concerns.
Amazon has released the web version of its AI assistant Alexa Plus in early access for users in the US and Canada. Users can sign up at Alexa.com and use the new chatbot directly in their browser. Alexa Plus was already available on new Echo devices and recently rolled out to older Echos as well. A beta test is currently running in Germany.
The web interface lets users upload documents, emails, and images. Alexa Plus can extract information from these files - turning recipes into shopping lists or automatically adding appointments to your calendar. Amazon is also promoting features like automatic meal planning and filling Amazon Fresh carts based on dietary restrictions. Smart home devices can be controlled through the website too. Amazon is also launching a new sidebar for quick access and a redesigned mobile Alexa app.
According to physician Zhu Kelei, AI has definitively saved the lives of patients whose scans were only flagged by PANDA, an AI tool developed by Alibaba researchers. The system analyzes non-contrast CT images – scans where even experienced radiologists can easily miss tumors.
Amazon is reportedly in talks to invest at least $10 billion in OpenAI. According to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke to The Information, the deal would push OpenAI's valuation past $500 billion. The influx of cash is intended to help OpenAI cover its massive server costs, including a recently agreed-upon $38 billion deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of the arrangement, OpenAI would commit to using Amazon's proprietary "Trainium" AI chips rather than relying solely on Nvidia hardware.
The companies are also discussing the possibility of turning ChatGPT into a shopping platform. However, Microsoft's exclusive rights to sell OpenAI models to cloud customers could limit Amazon's options here. Talks reportedly began in October following OpenAI's corporate restructuring but haven't concluded yet. OpenAI remains in urgent need of capital, as the company expects to burn through more than $100 billion over the next four years.
OpenAI has updated its Realtime API with three new model snapshots designed to improve transcription, speech synthesis, and function calling. According to developers, the gpt-4o-mini-transcribe variant significantly reduces hallucinations. For text-to-speech tasks, gpt-4o-mini-tts cuts the word error rate by 35 percent. The gpt-realtime-mini model, which targets voice assistants, follows instructions 22 percent more accurately and improves function calling by 13 percent.
? New audio model snapshots are now live in the Realtime API with improvements to reliability, lower error rates, and fewer hallucinations:
- gpt-4o-mini-transcribe-2025-12-15: 89% reduction in hallucinations compared to whisper-1
- gpt-4o-mini-tts-2025-12-15: 35% fewer word... pic.twitter.com/E8clreR1R0
- OpenAI Developers (@OpenAIDevs) December 15, 2025
OpenAI also explicitly mentioned improvements for Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, Bengali, and Italian.
Nvidia is taking over software provider SchedMD to expand its presence in open-source technology. On Monday, the company confirmed it will continue to distribute SchedMD's "Slurm" software as an open-source product. The platform helps plan large-scale computing tasks in data centers, ensuring server capacity is used efficiently.
Nvidia views the technology as critical infrastructure for generative AI, noting that developers rely on it to train models. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in California in 2010, SchedMD employs around 40 people and serves clients like cloud provider CoreWeave and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
