ChatGPT now lets you generate GIFs

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ChatGPT now lets you generate GIFs LINK

• ChatGPT can now turn text prompts or uploaded images into animated GIFs, a new feature running on Images 2.6, OpenAI's latest image generation model that it unveiled yesterday.
• After making a GIF, users can change its animation speed and view or edit each frame, and they can also upload a rough drawing for the model to complete before animating it.
• Images 2.6, rolling out today across all of ChatGPT and Codex subscription tiers, is not a video generator but makes still images 50 percent faster than Images 2.5, with its Flare model producing one in about six seconds on low quality.

Apple cuts employee AI budgets LINK

• Apple is cutting how much its employees can spend each day on paid AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, as the company tries to control rising costs even while pushing wider AI use across its operations.
• In October Apple dropped the daily AI budget for some engineers from $300 to $200, and is now weighing a further cut to $100, while some non-engineering teams could see their $100 allowance shrink to as little as $25.
• The budgets cover AI tokens, the units measuring how much a model processes, and the limits aren't firm: employees needing extra access can ask senior executives for exemptions, though it's unclear how widely the cuts will spread.

OpenAI vows to pay its own data center bills LINK

• OpenAI has promised to cover the full electricity and infrastructure costs of the AI data centers it builds and runs, moving to calm fears that its expansion will push up local power bills.
• The pledge, called the National Community Compact, includes financial guarantees protecting utility customers if projects stall, plus promises to share water and electricity data, commission noise studies, and drop secret deals with public officials.
• In Georgia, OpenAI's agreement with Georgia Power lets the utility cut electricity to its planned Effingham County campus by up to 1,000 megawatts during peak demand, part of a buildout targeting roughly $600 billion in computing spending by 2030.

SpaceX opens Starfall missions to customers LINK

• SpaceX has launched a commercial website for Starfall, its disk shaped reentry capsule, spelling out for the first time what customers receive when they book a flight to make or test products in microgravity.
• Each Starfall mission carries up to 1,000 kg of payload, supplies 1 kW of power, and keeps experiments online through Starlink the whole time, letting researchers pull data while the capsule is still in orbit rather than after splashdown.
• SpaceX aims Starfall at biomedical, pharmaceutical, and materials science customers, and signed three commercial missions last quarter that will fly on Starship, though the page lists no price or first operational flight date.

Apple will scan public iCloud links for harmful content LINK

• Apple will start scanning public iCloud links for harmful content in iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3, and visionOS 27.3, checking images in iCloud Photos and files in iCloud Drive shared using the "Anyone with the link" option.
• Only files shared with "Anyone with the link" get checked, not those limited to "People you choose," and Apple warns that content open to anyone is no longer end-to-end encrypted, even with Advanced Data Protection turned on.
• If Apple finds harmful material, it can move, remove, or delete the file, block or disable your Apple Account, and involve law enforcement; the software is in developer beta now with a public release due in December.

AI chip boom squeezes Nintendo's cartridge supply LINK

• The AI industry's growing hunger for memory chips is now cutting into the supply of ROM chips that run physical Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 game cartridges, chip maker Macronix told investors.
• Macronix said in its third-quarter report that its ROM chip production "has reached its end" and that it will slowly pull away from the game industry, a problem for Nintendo, which relies on the company for cartridge memory.
• That ROM output shrank 39 percent over the past year and now makes up just 5 percent of the firm's business, squeezed out by more profitable NOR, NAND, and eMMC chips competing for limited wafer space.

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