ChatGPT adds slide-making features, bringing new tools to daily work

OpenAI officially launched the Slides tool inside ChatGPT as part of ChatGPT Space announced last month. Users can generate presentations directly through chat, uploaded source documents, or outlines, and apply built-in templates. The feature also supports team members editing in real time online, leaving comments, and automatically adjusting layouts based on feedback.

Claude announced beta testing for two new features: Dashboards and Motion. Dashboards is for paid users, connecting to external data platforms to generate live-linked dashboards. Motion targets teams and businesses, turning plain text reports into code-driven animated video explainers, supporting text pace editing and MP4 exports.

Community developers used Grok Bot to find marketing websites that publicly sold or listed personal phone numbers, and automatically submitted removal requests to platforms. This method has been released for free, and Elon Musk confirmed the bot can be used to remove one's own number from spam call and marketing text lists.

MiniMax launched the M3.1 Flash model, previously known on OpenRouter by the codename Space Bunny. The model scored 74% on the DeepSWE benchmark, with inference speeds 3 times faster than M3 and costs cut to one-third. Input and output prices per million tokens are $0.15 and $0.60, with weights to be made public on October 23.

DeepSeek released the V4.1-Flash-1017 update, rolling it out simultaneously to the web version, app, and API. The new version not only surpasses the previous generation in multiple benchmarks, but also noticeably shortens task run times and output text lengths, striking a better balance between performance and cost while officially opening its self-developed search API.

The FBI arrested Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi engineer who had worked at OpenAI for over a year. Investigations showed he hid a recording device behind a television in an OpenAI executive confidential meeting room on September 28. After discovering the encrypted device, OpenAI set up monitoring and captured footage of him trying to retrieve it on October 5, making him suspected of stealing trade secrets.

Documents submitted to bankruptcy court by Character.ai, once valued at $1 billion, showed the company spent heavily on computing power year after year while generating limited revenue. Meanwhile, heavy legal costs from user suicide lawsuits and child protection regulatory pressures added to its financial burden. The company admitted that even setting aside legal disputes, its original AI companion business path was no longer sustainable.

Australian startup Apate has raised nearly $10 million in funding. The company deployed thousands of AI-driven fake victims to answer scam calls and reply with suspicious links, tying up scammers for a cumulative 17 years of call time across 2.5 million conversations. Partner banks reported that local user fraud losses dropped by 76% as a result.