ChatGPT temporarily down due to pressure from cartoon trend
Technical reports confirmed that ChatGPT's image generation feature has witnessed unprecedented demand over the past few hours from millions of users wanting to try out the new cartoon effect. This has strained the tool's servers and led to a temporary shutdown, with alerts appearing to users stating that requests cannot be processed at this time.
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Iraqi News
3 days ago
- Iraqi News
Accumulating bitcoin a risky digital rush by companies?
London – US President Donald Trump's media group and Tesla, the electric carmaker owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, are among an increasing number of companies buying huge amounts of bitcoin. The aim? To diversify reserves, counter inflation and attract investors, analysts say. – Who also invests? – Companies frequently own bitcoin — the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation — to take part in sector activities such as 'mining', which refers to the process of validating transactions in exchange for digital tokens. Tesla has previously accepted payments in bitcoin, while Trump Media soon plans to offer crypto investment products. Other players who had core operations totally unrelated to cryptocurrency, such as Japanese hotel business MetaPlanet, have switched to buying bitcoin. US firm Strategy, initially a seller of software under the name MicroStrategy, holds more than three percent of all bitcoin tokens, or over 600,000. Its co-founder Michael Saylor 'created real value for its original set of investors' by offering the opportunity to invest in shares linked to cryptocurrencies, Andy Constan, chief executive of financial analysts Damped Spring Advisors, told AFP. This was five years ago when other financial products allowing investment in cryptocurrencies, without a need to directly own tokens, were not permitted. – Why invest? – Companies collect bitcoins 'to diversify' their cash flow and 'counter the effects of inflation', said Eric Benoist, a tech and data research expert for Natixis bank. Some struggling companies are riding the trend in a bid to 'restore their image' by 'backing themselves with an asset perceived as solid and one that appreciates over time', he added. Strategy's current focus is on accumulating bitcoin, simply to attract investors interested in the currency's potential. Bitcoin can also have a simple practical use, as in the case of the Coinbase exchange, which uses its own reserves as collateral for its users. – The risks? – Bitcoin's value has soared around ninefold in five years, fuelled recently by US regulatory changes under Trump, a strong backer of the crypto sector. However, the unit's volatility is four times greater than that of the main US stock index, the S&P 500, according to Campbell Harvey, a professor of finance at Duke University in the United States. Harvey warns against using a company's cash reserves, 'their safe haven', to buy crypto. Bitcoin's price, currently around $117,000, has in recent years been boosted by large holders of cryptocurrency, referred to as 'whales'. Harvey argues that in the case of 'major buyer' Strategy, liquidating all their 600,000 bitcoin tokens is no simple task owing to the high value. 'Assuming that you could liquidate all of those bitcoin at the market price is a heroic assumption,' he told AFP, adding such a deal would see the cryptocurrency's price plummet. Jack Mallers, chief executive and co-founder of bitcoin-focused company Twenty One Capital, said his business embraced the sector's volatility, adding the market would need to be flooded for the token's price to crash. – A bubble? – According to its own calculation, Strategy's stock is selling at about 70 percent above the value of its bitcoin reserves. The company — which did not answer AFP's request for comment — is growing thanks to bitcoin purchases, which in turn is attracting investors and pushing up its share price. But ultimately it will need to monetise these crypto assets, for example by linking them to financial products, for its business to be sustained. Should Strategy and other so-called 'bitcoin treasury funds' fail to do so, Benoist fears the crypto investment bubble will burst. He points out that the strategy of accumulation runs counter to the original philosophy of bitcoin, which was conceived in 2008 as a decentralised means of payment. Today, 'bitcoins end up in electronic safes that are left untouched', he said.
Iraqi News
4 days ago
- Iraqi News
OpenAI releases ChatGPT-5 as AI race accelerates
San Francisco – OpenAI on Thursday released a keenly awaited new generation of its hallmark ChatGPT, touting 'significant' advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities, as a global race over the technology accelerates. ChatGPT-5 is rolling out free to all users of the AI tool, which is used by nearly 700 million people weekly, OpenAI said in a briefing with journalists. Co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman touted this latest iteration as 'clearly a model that is generally intelligent.' 'It is a significant step toward models that are really capable,' he said. Altman cautioned that there is still work to be done to achieve the kind of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that thinks the way people do. 'This is not a model that continuously learns as it is deployed from new things it finds, which is something that, to me, feels like it should be part of an AGI,' Altman said. 'But the level of capability here is a huge improvement.' GPT-5 is particularly adept when it comes to AI acting as an 'agent' independently tending to computer tasks, according to Michelle Pokrass of the development team. 'GPT-3 felt to me like talking to a high school student — ask a question, maybe you get a right answer, maybe you'll get something crazy,' Altman said. 'GPT-4 felt like you're talking to a college student; GPT five is the first time that it really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic.' – Vibe coding – Altman said he expects the ability to create software programs on demand — so-called 'vibe-coding' — to be a 'defining part of the new ChatGPT-5 era.' As an example, OpenAI executives demonstrated the bot being asked to create an app for learning the French language. With fierce competition around the world over the technology, Altman said ChatGPT-5 led the pack in coding, writing, health care and much more. Rivals including Google and Microsoft have been pumping billions of dollars into developing AI systems. Altman said there were 'orders of magnitude more gains' to come on the path toward AGI. 'Obviously…you have to invest in compute (power) at an eye watering rate to get that, but we intend to keep doing it.' ChatGPT-5 was also trained to be trustworthy and stick to providing answers as helpful as possible without aiding a seemingly harmful mission, according to OpenAI safety research lead Alex Beutel. 'We built evaluations to measure the prevalence of deception and trained the model to be honest,' Beutel said. ChatGPT-5 is trained to generate 'safe completions,' sticking to high-level information that can't be used to cause harm, according to Beutel. The debut comes a day after OpenAI said it was allowing the US government to use a version of ChatGPT designed for businesses for a year for just $1. Federal workers in the executive branch will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise essentially free in a partnership with the US General Services Administration, according to the artificial intelligence sector star. The company this week also released two new AI models that can be downloaded for free and altered by users, to challenge similar offerings by US and Chinese competition. The release of gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b 'open-weight language models' comes as the ChatGPT-maker is under pressure to share inner workings of its software in the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit.
Iraqi News
5 days ago
- Iraqi News
Sony hikes profit forecasts after strong quarter for games
Tokyo – PlayStation-maker Sony raised its annual profit forecasts on Thursday, citing strong performance in its key gaming business and a smaller-than-expected negative impact of US trade tariffs. The Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate said 'user engagement continued its strong momentum' in the video game sector. Its shares surged more than six percent in Tokyo after the announcement. Monthly active users in June and total gameplay hours on PlayStation consoles in the April-June quarter both increased six percent year-on-year, it said. It added that 'the situation surrounding the additional US tariffs is still fluid, and we intend to continue to monitor it and take action to minimise its impact'. 'The impact of the additional US tariffs on operating income is estimated to be approximately 70 billion yen ($470 million), a decrease of 30 billion yen from the previous forecast.' The company hiked its net profit forecast for the current 2025-26 financial year to 970 billion yen ($6.6 billion), up from the previous estimate of 930 billion yen. But even the higher forecast would not top the record net profit of 1.1 trillion yen that Sony logged in the previous financial year. Atul Goyal, an equity analyst at Jefferies, said ahead of the earnings release that the massively anticipated global release of the game 'Grand Theft Auto VI' in May 2026 'could lead to peak game profits' for Sony. GTA VI, which will be released on the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's XBox, will be set in Miami-like Vice City and features a playable female protagonist for the first time. The PlayStation 5, which launched in 2020, is entering a 'late' stage of the usual lifecycle for a console, Goyal said. 'Sony's outlook hinges on navigating tariff headwinds near-term, leveraging GTA6's blockbuster potential… and cyclical console risks,' he said. 'A sensors spin-off could transform valuation, while music provides steady growth and pictures provides stability.' Music streaming is an important business pillar for Sony, which has an impressive back catalogue and a current roster that includes artists such as Beyonce and Lil Nas X. The Japanese giant, which saw net profit jump 23 percent on-year in this year's April-June quarter, also raised its operating profit forecast on Thursday. Sony last month said it had bought a strategic 2.5 percent stake in Japanese game franchise giant Bandai Namco, which owns 'Gundam' and arcade classic 'Pac-Man', with a view to growing its anime business. With the 68 billion yen transaction, the companies plan 'to create new and emotionally moving experiences for fans', they said in a joint statement.
