News — 2026-04-24

OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.5 on Thursday, branding it its most intuitive and powerful model to date. Co‑founder Greg Brockman said the new system delivers sharper reasoning with fewer tokens, positioning the company closer to a long‑term “super app” that could blend ChatGPT, Codex and an AI browser into a single enterprise service. Early benchmarks show GPT-5.5 outpacing rivals from Google and Anthropic across a range of tasks, from coding assistance to scientific research. The model is now rolling out to Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users of ChatGPT. Read more

Anthropic announced today that its AI assistant Claude now supports 15 additional app connectors, adding popular services such as Uber, Uber Eats, Spotify, Instacart, TurboTax and Booking.com. The rollout lets users execute tasks across these platforms directly within a Claude conversation, from ordering food to filing taxes. Anthropic says the feature respects privacy, requires user confirmation before any purchase, and does not use connected‑app data to train its models. The expansion aims to make Claude a more practical, everyday tool for iPhone and Android users. Read more

Anthropic announced that its Claude AI chatbot can now connect to a suite of consumer‑focused services, including AllTrails, Spotify, Instacart and Uber. The new integrations let users plan hikes, play music, order groceries and book rides without leaving the chat. Anthropic says the move shifts Claude’s capabilities from primarily professional and educational tasks to everyday personal use, with more apps slated for future addition. Read more

OpenAI has added its newest language model, GPT-5.5, to ChatGPT, promising smoother, more reliable performance on complex, multi‑step requests. The upgrade reduces the need for back‑and‑forth prompting by improving context retention, reasoning depth and tool integration. Sam Altman framed the launch as a push for everyday usefulness, saying the company wants users to win. GPT-5.5 follows the recent ChatGPT Images 2.0 rollout and aims to make the AI assistant a continuous, dependable part of daily workflows. Read more

Customer‑service AI firm Sierra announced Thursday that it has bought French startup Fragment, a Y Combinator‑backed company that helps businesses embed artificial‑intelligence tools into everyday workflows. The deal marks Sierra's third public acquisition in as many weeks, following purchases of Japan's Opera Tech and voice‑agent firm Receptive AI. Fragment co‑founders Olivier Moindrot and Guillaume Genthial will join Sierra's engineering ranks. Financial terms were not disclosed, though PitchBook estimates Fragment raised about $2 million in seed funding. Sierra, founded by former Salesforce co‑CEO Bret Taylor, now counts Casper, Clear and Brex among its clients and is valued at roughly $10 billion. Read more

OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.5, its newest language model powering ChatGPT, as the company pivots from pure conversation to autonomous, real‑world productivity. The upgrade rolls out across ChatGPT and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers, with a premium “Pro” version for high‑level subscribers. Built to interpret loosely structured prompts, plan workflows and self‑check output, GPT-5.5 aims to cut back‑and‑forth interactions and deliver end‑to‑end results in coding, research, document creation and data analysis. Read more

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memo on Wednesday alleging that entities in China are running industrial‑scale campaigns to distill U.S. artificial‑intelligence models. The memorandum pledges to share threat intelligence with American AI firms and to explore sanctions against the perpetrators. The claim builds on accusations from OpenAI and Anthropic that Chinese labs have used millions of queries to replicate frontier models. Lawmakers responded with the Deterring American AI Model Theft Act, while the memo arrives weeks before a planned Trump‑Xi summit in Beijing. Read more

Generative artificial intelligence is amplifying the production of child sexual abuse material, prompting a sharp rise in reports to watchdogs and law‑enforcement agencies. Reuters found actionable AI‑generated CSAM reports more than doubled over two years, while the Internet Watch Foundation logged 8,029 such images and videos in 2025 alone. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 1.5 million AI‑linked reports that year, up from 67,000 the previous year. A Minnesota case involving a school employee illustrated how everyday photos can be weaponized, leaving investigators to untangle whether a child in an image is real, altered or entirely fabricated. Read more

A Wired investigation reveals that 11 gas‑powered AI data centers under construction or announced in the United States could release up to 129 million tons of carbon dioxide annually—more than Morocco’s total emissions in 2024. The facilities, linked to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and xAI, plan to run dedicated natural‑gas power plants to sidestep grid constraints, raising fresh concerns about the climate impact of the AI boom. Read more