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OpenAI is updating how ChatGPT works to encourage healthier use and avoid unintended consequences. One change that OpenAI says ChatGPT users will see “starting today” is a technique used by other digital services.

Much like video streaming services and social networks, OpenAI is adding a gentle break reminder for users during prolonged chat sessions.

Starting today, you’ll see gentle reminders during long sessions to encourage breaks. We’ll keep tuning when and how they show up so they feel natural and helpful.

According to the blog post, OpenAI says it measures success in return visits, not session duration. This subtle nudge to spend less time in ChatGPT sounds like it will change over time, but we should see the first examples in actual use from today.

OpenAI provides this example of how usage break reminders will look to start:

OpenAI also says it’s tuning ChatGPT to be less absolute when a user asks for actionable advice. For example, if a user asks if they should end a relationship, OpenAI says ChatGPT shouldn’t provide a yes or no response. Instead, ChatGPT should respond with prompts that encourage reflection and guide users to think through problems on their own.

The company also says it has “worked with over 90 physicians across over 30 countries—psychiatrists, pediatricians, and general practitioners — to build custom rubrics for evaluating complex, multi-turn conversations,” and it is “convening an advisory group of experts” to help it further improve healthy ChatGPT usage. You can read the full announcement post here.

9to5Mac’s Take

At a high level, avoiding absolute responses for life advice sounds like the right direction for ChatGPT.

The reality is that you can convince ChatGPT to answer any inquiry with the one answer or another. Don’t like what ChatGPT has to say? Just prompt it again to get a different response.

For that reason alone, OpenAI should avoid absolute responses and strive for a more consistent experience that encourages critical thinking rather than being a substitute for decision-making.

As for the subtle reminders to take breaks from ChatGPT use, I’m more skeptical of how effective these prompts are without seeing actual data. Both changes give OpenAI some cover from criticism over how ChatGPT usage can be unhealthy or dangerous without proper guardrails.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

Newsletter company Ghost now lets publishers syndicate their posts across social platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

With Ghost’s free social web syndication feature, which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol, “just as people can visit your Ghost website in any browser, subscribe with any feed reader, or receive newsletters in any email client, they can now follow your Ghost publication from any social web client,” the company says in a post about its 6.0 release. In addition to making it possible to publish to the social web, Ghost has a social web reader that lets you follow and read content from other publications and short-form posts from platforms like Bluesky and Threads. In March, Ghost announced a beta of the feature for its Ghost(Pro) users.

Ghost 6.0 also adds a native analytics suite. “Now you have the ability to filter all your data by audience to see what’s resonating across public visitors, free members, and paid members in real time, so you can understand what’s working, and make informed decisions about what to publish next,” the company says.

However, Ghost is also raising the price of the cheapest plans for Ghost(Pro) subscribers, which offer managed hosting. The starter plan now opens at $15 per month, up from $9 per month, while the publisher plan starts at $29 per month, up from $25 per month. Users who pay less than those new prices will keep their lower prices, according to Ghost.

In today’s announcement, Ghost says that publishers on the platform have now earned more than $100 million in revenue.

There are a ton of AI products out there to choose from today, but it’s pretty clear who the big players are. There’s Google’s Gemini, with its 400 million monthly users, which sounds like a lot, until you learn ChatGPT nets 700 million users every week. That’s really no match for even Microsoft, whose AI assistant Copilot garners a humble 20 million weekly users. That’s a lot of people, mind you, but if you’re Microsoft, you might be thinking of ways to pull in some of that traffic from OpenAI and Google—even if Microsoft is a major partner of OpenAI’s.

That appears to be exactly what Microsoft is doing. If you use Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, you’ll find many different options for interacting with Copilot. You can click the big Copilot button next to the search bar, or deal with the enormous “Copilot Answer” that appears at the top of any given search result, à la AI Overviews. But if you try to use Bing to search for another AI product altogether, like ChatGPT or Gemini, that Copilot Answer is replaced by something else entirely: Copilot itself.

Bing’s Copilot trickery

Give it a try. So long as Microsoft hasn’t updated Bing since I published this piece, a search for one of these AI competitors will result in the following: You’ll see “Promoted by Microsoft: Your Copilot is here,” encouraging you to “effortlessly ask questions, generate images, and handle tasks with Copilot, your reliable companion.” Below that, a large interactive search bar, which reads, “Ask me anything.” Indeed, you can enter a query in this field, his return, and find yourself in a new Copilot window. (Curiously, searching or Anthropic or its AI product, Claude, does not trigger this Copilot experience. Sorry, Anthropic.)

Look, Bing is a Microsoft product, so of course the company would rather direct you to its own services than point you towards the thing you’re actually looking for. In fact, the same thing happens when you search Bing for a non-Microsoft web browser, like Chrome—Bing’s first “result” is instead a plea to “try the latest browser from Microsoft,” with a convenient link to launch Edge. For me, however, this latest tactic blurs the lines a bit between encouragement and trickery. I think if you are searching for one web browser, and Microsoft offers you a link to another, it’s fairly obvious you’re choosing between those two programs. However, I can see how it might be confusing for someone looking for ChatGPT on Bing to see a search bar appear right away, with an encouraging message to get started then and there—especially if they don’t know what Copilot is.

This is becoming a trend, Microsoft

It wouldn’t the first time Microsoft tried to trick people into using their products. At the start of this year, the company spoofed Google’s homepage whenever someone used Bing to search for Google. To the untrained eye, you might think you landed on Google already, as the top half of the window looked very much like the iconic search engine. It was only after looking at the bottom half that it became clear this was still a search result on Bing’s site, not Google’s. How many people were tricked into using Bing when they thought they were using the search engine they were looking for?

Fast forward to August, and I now wonder how many people are going to use Copilot because they thought they had made it to ChatGPT or Gemini. In my humble opinion, if you’re going to build a search engine, it should primarily point people towards the content they’re looking for. Using your search engine as a vehicle to trick people into using your other services is dishonest, and, frankly, sad.