SAN FRANCISCO: The luxury San Francisco home of OpenAI boss Sam Altman was hit by a Molotov cocktail on Friday, the company said, as police announced the arrest of a suspect. No one was injured in the incident, and the firm behind the popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot would not confirm if the CEO was home at the time. The motive for the attack and subsequent threats to set fire to OpenAI&rsquo;s San Francisco headquarters &mdash; apparently by the same 20-year-old man &mdash; were not immediately known. But they come as Altman&rsquo;s profile has risen with the increasing use of AI, amid fears it could massively disrupt employment patterns and cause irreversible societal changes. Police in San Francisco responded after reports that someone had tried to set fire to a gate at the sprawling home. A statement from the San Francisco Police Department said officers were dispatched to the home just after 4:00 am (1100 GMT). &ldquo;At the scene, officers learned that an unknown male subject threw an incendiary destructive device at a home, causing a fire to an exterior gate. The suspect then fled on foot,&rdquo; SFPD said. A short time later they were called to the firm&rsquo;s offices where a man was making threats. &ldquo;When officers arrived on scene, they recognized the male to be the same suspect from the earlier incident and immediately detained him,&rdquo; the statement said of the unnamed 20-year-old suspect. A spokesman for OpenAI confirmed the attack on the chief executive&rsquo;s residence and the threats to the San Francisco headquarters.&ldquo;The individual is in custody, and we&rsquo;re assisting law enforcement with their investigation,&rdquo; the spokesman told AFP. AI for warAltman and OpenAI have become targets for people protesting AI as a threat to society. Detractors have been particularly troubled by OpenAI&rsquo;s decision to provide its technology to the US Department of Defense. In a rare post on his personal blog, Altman shared a photo of his husband and their baby &ldquo;in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house.&rdquo; The OpenAI chief defended his convictions and called for a de-escalation of rhetoric surrounding. &ldquo;I empathize with anti-technology sentiments and clearly technology isn&rsquo;t always good for everyone,&rdquo; Altman wrote. &ldquo;But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine.&rdquo; OpenAI last month said it was valued at $852 billion after a funding round that raised $122 billion. The figure reflects the surging costs of computing power and came amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and rival companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover expenses. ChatGPT claims the top position in consumer AI, with more than 900 million weekly active users and some 50 million subscribers. Use of ChatGPT&rsquo;s online search engine has tripled over the course of a year, according to OpenAI.

Artificial Intelligence

Attack targets Sam Altman’s San Francisco home as police arrest suspect after Molotov incident, raising concerns over growing backlash against OpenAI and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence technologies worldwide.

OpenAI CEO’s California home hit by Molotov cocktail, man arrested

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI on Tuesday said that the startup was valued at $852 billion in a freshly closed funding round that raised $122 billion.&nbsp;The eye-watering level of funding came in higher than originally projected, reflecting the surging costs of computing power and arriving amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover expenses.&nbsp;&quot;The capital being deployed today is helping build the infrastructure layer for intelligence itself,&quot; OpenAI said in a blog post.&nbsp;&quot;Over time, that value will flow back into the economy, to companies, to communities, and increasingly to individuals.&quot;&nbsp;The ChatGPT-maker said that its revenue rate of $2 billion monthly is quickly growing.&nbsp;The funding round included a diverse set of partners including Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Softbank, according to OpenAI.&nbsp;In an unusual move, some $3 billion was reportedly raised from individual investors.&nbsp;ChatGPT claims the top position in consumer AI, with more than 900 million weekly active users and some 50 million subscribers.&nbsp;Use of ChatGPT&#39;s online search engine has tripled over the course of a year, according to OpenAI.&nbsp;&quot;These are not just growth milestones -- they show that frontier AI is becoming part of everyday life for people around the world,&quot; the San Francisco-based startup said in the post.&nbsp;The company in February began rolling out advertising for its non-premium users in a bid to bring in more revenue.&nbsp;OpenAI also announced that it is building a &quot;superapp&quot; that will combine ChatGPT, internet browsing, a Codex coding tool, and agentic capabilities that allow digital assistants to independently tend to tasks.&nbsp;The massive funding round comes with anticipation that OpenAI is planning to become a publicly traded company this year as competition intesifies in the AI sector.&nbsp;Arch-rival Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, continues to gain ground and grab headlines for its well-regarded Claude AI models.&nbsp;Anthropic earlier this year secured a $30 billion funding round.&nbsp;Google&#39;s AI model Gemini has emerged as another potent competitor, with Elon Musk&#39;s xAI also attracting investment and users.

OpenAI raised $122 billion in a funding round valuing it at $852 billion, backed by major partners and individuals, while expanding ChatGPT, building a superapp, growing revenue, and preparing for public listing amid AI competition.

OpenAI raises $122 billion in boosted funding round

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI announced Friday a massive $110 billion funding round valuing the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, with SoftBank, Nvidia and Amazon each making multi-billion-dollar commitments as the artificial intelligence company races to meet surging global demand.&nbsp;The investment round -- one of the largest in Silicon Valley history -- includes $30 billion from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, $30 billion from chip giant Nvidia, and up to $50 billion from Amazon, with additional investors expected to join as the round progresses.&nbsp;Alongside the capital injection, OpenAI announced strategic partnerships with both Amazon, the world&#39;s biggest cloud company through its AWS division, and Nvidia, whose AI chips remain unparalleled in their capacity for AI training.&nbsp;&quot;SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon are long-term partners who share our ambition to turn real scientific progress into systems that deliver meaningful benefits for people at global scale,&quot; OpenAI said in a statement.&nbsp;The eye-watering level of funding reflects the soaring costs of computing power and comes amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover those costs.&nbsp;The Amazon investment will begin with $15 billion, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met, the companies said.&nbsp;According to reports, these include OpenAI going public or achieving artificial general intelligence, a sometimes ill-defined standard of AI capability that more closely matches human-level ability.&nbsp;OpenAI and Amazon also struck a deal in which the ChatGPT maker will use two gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon&#39;s in-house Trainium chips.&nbsp;Amazon&#39;s cloud computing rival Microsoft, which did not participate in the funding round, remains a major shareholder of OpenAI and a strategic partner.&nbsp;In the announcement, OpenAI cited a series of user metrics pointing to a breakneck pace of AI adoption.&nbsp;Even if short of its previous forecasts, ChatGPT now counts more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million paying consumer subscribers, with January and February on track to be the platform&#39;s biggest-ever months for new subscriptions, the company said.&nbsp;It added that more than nine million businesses pay to use ChatGPT for workplace tasks, while its Codex software development tool has seen weekly users more than triple since the start of the year to 1.6 million.&nbsp;The figures are intended to reassure more skeptical investors who have questioned OpenAI&#39;s ability to secure revenue, with user growth for its flagship ChatGPT slowing.&nbsp;The company this month began rolling out advertising for its non-premium users in a bid to bring in more revenue.&nbsp;According to The Information tech news, OpenAI now predicts that it will burn more than twice as much cash through 2030 than previously predicted, spending $665 billion on the costs of running and training its AI.&nbsp;Competition has ramped up too.&nbsp;Arch-rival Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, continues to gain ground and grab headlines for its well-regarded Claude AI models.&nbsp;Anthropic earlier this year secured a $30 billion funding round.&nbsp;Google&#39;s AI model Gemini has also emerged as a potent competitor, with Elon Musk&#39;s xAI also attracting investment and users.

OpenAI announces a $110 billion funding round valuing it at $730 billion, with major backing from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon, as it expands partnerships, scales computing capacity, and accelerates growth amid rising costs and intensifying AI competition.

OpenAI raises $110 bn in record funding round

PARIS: The introduction of advertisements and sponsored content into chatbots has raised privacy concerns among AI users as brands scramble to stay relevant in a fast-changing online environment. <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/over-million-users-talk-about-suicide-weekly-to-chatgpt-open-ai" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">ChatGPT</a>&nbsp;developer OpenAI began showing ads in chatbot conversations for free and low-cost users to start balancing its hundreds of billions in spending commitments with new revenue sources. It swiftly came in for mockery from rival Anthropic, which has staked its reputation on safety and data security. Anthropic&#39;s advertisement broadcast during last week&#39;s Super Bowl showed a man asking advice from a conversational AI, which then shoehorns advertising copy for a dating site into its otherwise relevant response. OpenAI boss Sam Altman shot back that the clip was &quot;clearly dishonest&quot;.&nbsp;Beyond OpenAI, Microsoft has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/openai-introducing-ads-to-chatgpt" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">running contextual ads</a>&nbsp;and sponsored content in its Copilot AI assistant since 2023.&nbsp;AI search engine Perplexity has been testing ads in the United States since 2024, while Google is also testing ads in the AI &quot;overviews&quot; its namesake search engine has been offering since last year. Data privacyGoogle has repeatedly denied wanting to run ads in its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/apple-chooses-googles-gemini-ai-to-power-siri" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gemini</a>chatbot, with Demis Hassabis, head of the search giant&#39;s DeepMind AI arm, saying that ads &quot;have to be handled very carefully&quot;.&nbsp;&quot;The most important thing&quot; in AI is &quot;trust in security and privacy, because you want to share potentially your life with that assistant,&quot; he added.&nbsp;OpenAI has sought to reassure users that ChatGPT&#39;s responses will not be modified by the ads, which are shown alongside conversations rather than being integrated into them.&nbsp;It has also promised not to sell user data to advertisers.&nbsp;AI companies are &quot;concerned that selling ads will scare away users,&quot; said Nate Elliott, an analyst with US data firm Emarketer.&nbsp;But &quot;when it&#39;s free, you&#39;re the product. It&#39;s a risk we&#39;re all more or less aware of already,&quot; said Jerome Malzac of AI consultancy Micropole.&nbsp;&quot;We accept it because we find value in it.&quot;&nbsp;If that proves true, advertisers will be delighted to surf the AI wave as it crashes over the world&#39;s internet users.&nbsp;Game changer&quot;It&#39;s going to be a game changer for the entire industry,&quot; said Justin Seibert, head of Direct Online Marketing.&nbsp;&quot;We&#39;re already seeing how high the conversion rates (interactions resulting in a purchase) are for people that are coming in from ChatGPT and the other LLMs (large language models),&quot; he added.&nbsp;AI assistants could account for up to 2% of the online advertising market by 2030, HSBC bank analysts suggested in a report.&nbsp;Many brands are already prioritizing visibility on the new channel, including US supermarket chain Target and software maker Adobe.&nbsp;Beyond buying a spot on users&#39; screens, companies are also pushing for their products to appear in chatbots&#39; organic responses.&nbsp;The practice is known as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), an evolution of the Search Engine Optimization strategy during the era of Google&#39;s dominance over the web.&nbsp;&quot;We identified 90 rules that can make sure the content you create is valued by AI and spread to the right places,&quot; said Joan Burkovic, head of French GEO startup GetMint.&nbsp;The company already claims 100 clients, including fashion brand Lacoste.&nbsp;Malzac highlighted techniques like including references to scientific papers, adding a &quot;frequently asked questions&quot; section to your website, and posting information that&#39;s structured and regularly updated, Malzac said.&nbsp;&quot;If your brand isn&#39;t referenced (by chatbots), it no longer exists&quot; for some users, he warned.

This picture shows screens displaying the logos of OpenAI and ChatGPT. — (AFP/FILE)

ChatGPT developer OpenAI begins showing ads in chatbot conversations for free and low-cost users to start balancing its hundreds of billions in spending commitments with new revenue sources.

New world for users and brands as ads hit AI chatbots

SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to allow its users this year to create AI versions of themselves for video sharing, matching a feature from Sora, the video-creation app from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.&nbsp;&quot;AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in,&quot; CEO Neal Mohan wrote in an annual letter outlining the platform&#39;s priorities for 2026.&nbsp;The Google-owned video platform sees AI as the next transformative technology for content creation, comparing it to earlier innovations like the music synthesizer and Photoshop.&nbsp;More than one million channels used YouTube&#39;s AI creation tools daily in December, according to the company.&nbsp;Mohan said YouTube plans to dramatically expand artificial intelligence tools for its creators this year, including allowing them to produce games from simple text prompts.&nbsp;The ability to generate short videos using your own likeness would follow Sora&#39;s cameo feature, which was launched last year by OpenAI and allows users to insert their likeness and voice into AI-generated videos.&nbsp;Google and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/openai-introducing-ads-to-chatgpt" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">OpenAI</a>&nbsp;are caught in an intense AI rivalry, with the search engine giant pushing out generative AI abilities to products such as Gmail and Maps, as well as promoting its Gemini chatbot, a competitor to ChatGPT.&nbsp;In an email to AFP, Google said it would release more details about the feature soon.&nbsp;In his letter, Mohan insisted that &quot;AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement&quot; for human creators.&nbsp;This addressed growing concerns about AI-generated content quality and authenticity as well as fears about the long-term survival of creative industries in the face of the technology.&nbsp;The platform will require creators to disclose altered or synthetic content and plans to give them tools to manage unauthorized use of their likeness in AI-generated videos.&nbsp;Mohan said YouTube is also building systems to combat &quot;AI slop&quot; -- low-quality automated content -- by adapting existing anti-spam and clickbait measures.&nbsp;The video service has been the top streaming platform by watch time in the United States for nearly three years, according to Nielsen data. Its short-form video feature, Shorts, now averages 200 billion daily views.

YouTube plans to let creators generate AI videos using their own likeness, expanding AI tools while requiring disclosure, combating low-quality content, and positioning AI as a creative aid amid rivalry with OpenAI this year globally.

YouTube to match OpenAI with AI likeness feature

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI announced Friday it will begin testing advertisements on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the wildly popular artificial intelligence chatbot seeks to increase revenue to cover its soaring costs.&nbsp;The ads will initially appear in the United States for free and lower-tier subscribers, the company said in a blog post outlining its long-anticipated move into advertising.&nbsp;The integration of<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/chatgpt-now-lets-users-buy-from-etsy-shopify-in-push-for-chatbot-shopping" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer"> advertising</a> has been a key question for generative AI chatbots, with companies largely reluctant to interrupt the user experience with ads.&nbsp;But the exorbitant costs of running AI services may have forced OpenAI&#39;s hand.&nbsp;Only a small percentage of its nearly one billion users pay for subscription services, putting pressure on the company to find new revenue sources.&nbsp;Since ChatGPT&#39;s launch in 2022, OpenAI&#39;s valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds -- higher than any other private company. Some expect it could go public with a trillion-dollar valuation.&nbsp;But the ChatGPT maker burns through cash at a furious rate, mostly on the powerful computing required to deliver its services.&nbsp;With its move, OpenAI brings its business model closer to tech giants Google and Meta, which have built advertising empires on the back of their free-to-use services.&nbsp;Unlike <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/openai-signs-38-bn-infrastructure-deal-with-cloud-giant-aws" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">OpenAI</a>, those companies have massive advertising revenue to fund AI innovation with Amazon also building a solid ad business on its shopping and video streaming platforms.&nbsp;&quot;Ads aren&#39;t a distraction from the gen AI race; they&#39;re how OpenAI stays in it,&quot; said Jeremy Goldman, an analyst at Emarketer.&nbsp;&quot;If ChatGPT turns on ads, OpenAI is admitting something simple and consequential: the race isn&#39;t just about model quality anymore; it&#39;s about monetizing attention without poisoning trust,&quot; he added.&nbsp;OpenAI&#39;s pivot comes as Google gains ground in the generative AI race, infusing services including Gmail, Maps and YouTube with AI features that in addition to its Gemini chatbot compete directly with ChatGPT.&nbsp;To address concerns about its pivot into advertising, OpenAI pledged that ads would never influence ChatGPT&#39;s answers and that user conversations would remain private from advertisers.&nbsp;&quot;Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,&quot; the company stated. &quot;Answers are optimized based on what&#39;s most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.&quot;&nbsp;In an apparent reference to Meta, TikTok and Google&#39;s YouTube platforms accused of maximizing user engagement to boost ad views OpenAI said it would &quot;not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT.&quot;&nbsp;&quot;We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue,&quot; it added.&nbsp;The commitment to user well-being is a sensitive issue for OpenAI, which has faced accusations of allowing ChatGPT to prioritize emotional engagement over safety, allegedly contributing to mental distress among some users.

OpenAI will test ads on ChatGPT for US free users to boost revenue amid high AI costs, pledging ads won’t affect answers or privacy as competition with Google intensifies and rising valuations and investor pressure.

OpenAI introducing ads to ChatGPT

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called on world governments Thursday to invest in AI infrastructure, as questions grow about whether the ChatGPT-maker, the world&rsquo;s most valuable private company, can absorb artificial intelligence&rsquo;s massive costs. &ldquo;What we do think might make sense is governments building (and owning) their own AI infrastructure, but then the upside of that should flow to the government as well,&rdquo; Altman wrote in a long post on X, clarifying OpenAI&rsquo;s position amid growing scrutiny of the company&rsquo;s ambitious spending plans. The company behind ChatGPT was facing scrutiny after its chief financial officer Sarah Friar told a business conference Wednesday that the US government could help attract the enormous investment needed for AI computing and infrastructure by guaranteeing loans to pay for the buildout. After fierce criticism, the executive later retracted the statement, saying her point was clumsily explained, which Altman reiterated in his own post. &ldquo;We do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters,&rdquo; Altman wrote. &ldquo;We believe that governments should not pick winners or losers, and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;If we screw up and can&rsquo;t fix it, we should fail, and other companies will continue on doing good work.&rdquo; The comments came as OpenAI faces questions about its financial trajectory. OpenAI has become a highly pivotal company, with the AI race launched by the release of ChatGPT driving Wall Street to new records even as doubts grow about the broader health of the American economy. Altman said the company expects to reach over $20 billion in annualized revenue this year, a significant accomplishment for a startup, and is looking at infrastructure spending commitments of approximately $1.4 trillion over the next eight years. This includes a $300 billion partnership with Oracle and a $500 billion Stargate project with Oracle and SoftBank that was announced at the White House in January. He projected that OpenAI revenue will grow to hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030, driven by as-yet-unreleased consumer devices, robotics, and AI-powered scientific discovery. Given the strategic importance of the technology, Altman argued that building a &ldquo;strategic national reserve of computing power&rdquo; makes sense for governments, particularly as massive infrastructure projects take years to complete. He cited severe compute constraints already forcing OpenAI and competitors to limit availability of their products and delay new features, warning that the risk of insufficient computing power outweighs the risk of overbuilding.

Sam Altman urges governments to build and own AI computing infrastructure, saying it is essential to meet rising demand. He clarifies the company is not seeking government guarantees, despite growing concerns over AI development costs.

OpenAI boss calls on governments to build AI infrastructure

WASHINGTON: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI signed a $38 billion deal Monday with Amazon&#39;s AWS cloud computing arm, as the artificial intelligence company continues on a major partnership spree that has also included Oracle, Broadcom, AMD and chip-making juggernaut Nvidia.&nbsp;Under the seven-year agreement, OpenAI, which is partly owned by AWS&#39;s archrival Microsoft, will gain access to computing resources including hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs, the crucial component of the generative artificial intelligence revolution.&nbsp;The deal, which will grow over its multi-year term, will also give access to tens of millions of more conventional CPUs that will be used for the everyday deployment of so-called agentic AI.&nbsp;&quot;Scaling frontier AI requires massive, reliable compute,&quot; said OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in a joint statement. &quot;Our partnership with AWS strengthens the broad compute ecosystem that will power this next era and bring advanced AI to everyone.&quot;&nbsp;OpenAI will immediately begin utilizing AWS computing, with all capacity targeted to be used before the end of 2026, and the ability to expand further in the coming years.&nbsp;By some estimates, OpenAI has inked approximately $1 trillion worth of infrastructure deals in 2025, including a $300 billion Oracle deal and a $500 billion Stargate project with Oracle and SoftBank.&nbsp;The massive infrastructure spending comes as revenues in 2025 are expected to be in the tens of billions this year, a very high figure for a startup, but far from the amount needed to recoup the costs of computing needed to power OpenAI&#39;s powerful chatbots.&nbsp;The deal was the first one since OpenAI formalized its new structure, in which the company has a freer hand to move away from its non-profit origins and deliver profits for its investors.&nbsp;The partnership with AWS builds on existing collaboration between the companies, with OpenAI&#39;s more open-source models already available on Amazon servers.

OpenAI signed a $38 billion, seven-year deal with AWS, gaining access to Nvidia GPUs and CPUs to scale AI. The partnership expands OpenAI’s infrastructure, supporting advanced AI deployment amid record multi-billion-dollar tech deals in 2025.

OpenAI signs $38 bn infrastructure deal with cloud giant AWS

NEW YORK: AI chip juggernaut Nvidia became the world&#39;s first $5 trillion company on Wednesday, as investors remain confident that artificial intelligence will deliver a new wave of innovation and growth.&nbsp;The California-based tech giant saw its share price rise by 4.91 percent to $210.90 at the open of trading on Wall Street, pushing Nvidia&#39;s market capitalization past the never-before-seen threshold.&nbsp;The surge in the company&#39;s share price follows continued strong sales, a flurry of new deals -- including a partnership with Europe&#39;s Nokia announced on Tuesday -- as well as expectations that the company may soon regain access to China.&nbsp;Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected in South Korea this week, where he will attend the sidelines of the APEC summit at which US President Donald Trump will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, with issues related to AI development expected to be discussed.&nbsp;Nvidia chips are currently not sold in China due to a combination of Chinese government bans, national security concerns, and ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China.&nbsp;The Trump administration favors a more nuanced approach to selling AI chips to Beijing, but faces deep skepticism from China hawks across the US political spectrum who favor tougher bans on AI technology.&nbsp;Nvidia has announced a series of partnerships in recent weeks, including an intention to invest up to $100 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI over the coming years.&nbsp;It also said it would invest $5 billion in struggling chip rival Intel, in response to the Trump administration&#39;s desire to bring back more manufacturing of semiconductors to the United States.&nbsp;Nvidia produces the advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) that power most generative AI systems, including those behind ChatGPT and other large language models.

Nvidia became the first company worth $5 trillion after its stock jumped nearly 5%. The rise came from strong AI chip sales, new deals, and big investments in OpenAI and Intel.


AI chip giant Nvidia becomes world's first $5 trillion company

Web Desk

ISLAMABAD: At least 1.2 million users on ChatGPT talk about &ldquo;suicide plan&rdquo; on the platform, its company OpenAI said this week. OpenAI has shared new data showing how often its chatbot, ChatGPT, is used in moments of deep distress. In their latest blogpost, it says that every week, about 0.15% of its users show &ldquo;explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.&rdquo; With roughly 800 million users each week, that translates into 1.2 million people talking to ChatGPT about suicide. The company also found that another 0.07 percent, about 560,000 people, show early signs of mental health emergencies like psychosis or mania. OpenAI claims that these numbers are small percentages but when considering its huge userbase, the numbers are concerning.&nbsp; Earlier this year, Arab News reported that Pakistan ranked among the top 20 countries for ChatGPT traffic, with thousands using it daily &ldquo;to vent feelings, manage anxiety, and seek late-night reassurance when friends aren&rsquo;t available.&rdquo;&nbsp; OpenAI says &ldquo;these are only estimates.&rdquo; Detecting emotional distress through text is complex and can easily be misread. But the company says it is working with doctors and psychologists to make ChatGPT more sensitive in how it responds. To improve safety, OpenAI partnered with more than 170 mental health experts worldwide.&nbsp; &ldquo;We worked with more than 170 mental health experts to help ChatGPT more reliably recognize signs of distress, respond with care, and guide people toward real-world support&ndash;reducing responses that fall short of our desired behavior by 65-80%.&rdquo; The report said. The team trained ChatGPT to recognise warning signs, provide gentle and supportive responses, and guide users toward local helplines. The company says unsafe or unhelpful replies have dropped by 65 to 80 percent after these updates. The blog also highlights a new risk: people becoming emotionally dependent on the AI itself. Some users talk to ChatGPT for comfort, spending long hours chatting when they should reach real people. OpenAI now encourages users to take breaks and seek human support when needed. The company insists ChatGPT is not a therapist. It can provide information and empathy, but it cannot replace professional care. Still, the data shows that people in crisis often reach out to what feels most accessible: an AI that listens without judgment. &ldquo;We believe ChatGPT can provide a supportive space for people to process what they&rsquo;re feeling, and guide them to reach out to friends, family, or a mental health professional when appropriate.&quot;

OpenAI revealed that about 1.2 million ChatGPT users weekly discuss suicide, with hundreds of thousands showing other mental health distress. The company is training its AI to detect emotional crises and direct users toward professional support

Articles tagged with "ChatGPT"