During the first six months of 2013, Microsoft received requests that affected between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft’s encryption and transparency efforts. Microsoft employed 127,104 people as of June 5, 2014, making this about a 14 percent reduction of its workforce as the biggest Microsoft layoff ever. Previously, Microsoft had eliminated 5,800 jobs in 2009 in line with the Great Recession of 2008–2017.
OpenAI upgrades its transcription and voice-generating AI models
For instance, it replaced GPT-4o with GPT-5 and, more recently, introduced Apps in ChatGPT, which lets you bring third-party services directly into your chats. For deeper tasks, there’s Deep Research, which scours the web and creates full reports with citations, and Agent Mode, which can open sites, check your calendar, or pull data from connected apps like Gmail. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services.
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The company then shows the responses to testers, who assess how persuasive the argument is, and finally OpenAI compares the AI models’ responses to human replies for that same post. OpenAI announced a new AI “agent” called deep research that’s designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT. OpenAI says the “agent” is intended for instances where you don’t just want a quick answer or summary, but instead need to assiduously consider information from multiple websites and other sources. In response to pressure from rivals like DeepSeek, OpenAI is changing the way its o3-mini model communicates its step-by-step “thought” process.
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The tools are part of OpenAI’s new Responses API, which enables enterprises to develop customized AI agents that can perform web searches, scan through company files, and navigate websites, similar to OpenAI’s Operator product. The Responses API effectively replaces OpenAI’s Assistants API, which the company plans to discontinue in the first half of 2026. OpenAI says its o1-pro uses more computing than its o1 “reasoning” AI model to deliver “consistently better responses.” It’s only accessible to select developers who have spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services. OpenAI charges $150 for every million tokens (about 750,000 words) input into the model and $600 for every million tokens the model produces. It costs twice as much as OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 for input and 10 times the price of regular o1.
OpenAI introduced its most affordable subscription plan, ChatGPT Go, in India, priced at 399 rupees per month (approximately $4.57). This move aims to expand OpenAI’s presence in its second-largest market, offering enhanced access to the latest GPT-5 model and additional features. OpenAI rolled out GPT-5-Codex, a new version of its AI coding agent that can spend anywhere from a few seconds to seven hours tackling a task, depending on complexity. The company says this dynamic approach helps the model outperform GPT-5 on key coding benchmarks, including bug fixes and large-scale refactoring. The update comes as OpenAI looks to keep Codex competitive in a fast-growing chicken road app market that now includes rivals like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.
In September 2014, Microsoft laid off 2,100 people, including 747 people in the Seattle–Redmond area, where the company is headquartered. In October 2014, Microsoft revealed that it was almost done with eliminating 18,000 employees, which was its largest-ever layoff sweep. In July 2015, Microsoft announced another 7,800 job cuts in the next several months.
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- The lawsuits focus on GPT-4o’s tendency to be overly agreeable, despite users expressing dangerous intentions.
- While the exit was part of shift in business strategies and preference for cloud based models, the company’s exit from Pakistan was also reportedly attributed to “growing difficulties” with the country’s business environment.
- OpenAI has launched three members of the GPT-4.1 model — GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano — with a specific focus on coding capabilities.
- It will help organizations in Asia meet their local data sovereignty requirements when using OpenAI’s products.
- Cytation in January 1986 became Microsoft’s first acquisition, forming the company’s CD-ROM division.
I’ve covered the models and modes above, but here’s a reminder of all the core features (as of October 2025). This year alone, OpenAI peppered us with new models, modes, and features to play with inside the AI. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data. Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. OpenAI launched a new AI “reasoning” model, o3-mini, the newest in the company’s o family of models. OpenAI first previewed the model in December alongside a more capable system called o3.
Altman warns that ChatGPT therapy isn’t confidential
Microsoft Works would later be sold with other Microsoft products including Microsoft Word and Microsoft Bookshelf, a reference collection introduced in 1987 that was the company’s first CD-ROM product. On August 8, 1989, Microsoft introduced its most successful office product, Microsoft Office. Unlike the model of Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and so forth. Cytation in January 1986 became Microsoft’s first acquisition, forming the company’s CD-ROM division. On February 16, 1986, Microsoft relocated their headquarters to a corporate office campus in Redmond, Washington.
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- Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,a and one of the most valuable brands globally.
- Formerly codenamed “Longhorn” in the early development stages, Windows Vista was released to consumers on January 30, 2007.
- For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for less than US$100,000, which IBM renamed to IBM PC DOS.
- Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows.
- OpenAI says its o1-pro uses more computing than its o1 “reasoning” AI model to deliver “consistently better responses.” It’s only accessible to select developers who have spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services.
Concerns were raised about Microsoft’s licensing practices potentially locking customers into its services and its AI investments possibly sidestepping regulatory oversight. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU fine after regulators accused it of abusing market power by bundling its Teams video-conferencing app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software. The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft’s practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software. Despite Microsoft’s efforts to avoid deeper scrutiny, including unbundling Teams, regulators remained unconvinced. This action followed a 2019 complaint from Slack, which was later acquired by Salesforce.
Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft underwent a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012—the corporation’s logos, products, services and websites adopted the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Microsoft previewed Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview was released on September 13, and was replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012. On June 18, 2012, Microsoft unveiled the Surface, the first computer in the company’s history to have its hardware made by Microsoft.
OpenAI has effectively canceled the release of o3 in favor of what CEO Sam Altman is calling a “simplified” product offering. In a post on X, Altman said that, in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that “integrates a lot of OpenAI’s technology,” including o3, in ChatGPT and its API. As a result of that roadmap decision, OpenAI no longer plans to release o3 as a standalone model. OpenAI rolled out new tools designed to help developers and businesses build AI agents — automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks — using the company’s own AI models and frameworks.
Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its current best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system; Microsoft Office, a suite of productivity software; Xbox, a line of entertainment of games, music, and video; Bing, a line of search engines; and Microsoft Azure, a cloud services platform. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI. This inquiry is part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to curb the power of major tech companies, especially under FTC chair Lina Khan.
In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the federal district court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. IBM first approached Gates and Allen about Microsoft’s upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) in July 1980, shortly after Gates’s mother began working on United Way’s executive board with IBM CEO John Opel. On August 12, 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the IBM PC. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for less than US$100,000, which IBM renamed to IBM PC DOS. Due to potential copyright infringement problems with CP/M, IBM marketed both CP/M and PC DOS for US$240 and US$40, respectively, with PC DOS eventually becoming the standard because of its lower price.
OpenAI is offering its $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus subscription tier for free to all college students in the U.S. and Canada through the end of May. The offer will let millions of students use OpenAI’s premium service, which offers access to the company’s GPT-4o model, image generation, voice interaction, and research tools that are not available in the free version. OpenAI has launched three members of the GPT-4.1 model — GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano — with a specific focus on coding capabilities. In the competition to develop advanced programming models, GPT-4.1 will rival AI models such as Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and DeepSeek’s upgraded V3. However, multiple independent tests indicate that the model is less reliable than previous OpenAI releases.
