OpenAI Checkout Ambition, Trump AI Plan, Apple Hits Pause

Hi Ai5ers,

From OpenAI's latest monetization push to Apple's cautious AI rollout, this week’s headlines reveal the shifting tides in power, policy, and precision. Dive into the intersection of commerce, history, politics, and ethics, all driven by AI. Plus, discover how inscriptions from 2,000 years ago are being decoded using today’s machine learning tools.

Happy reading!

Today's Ai5:

🛒 OpenAI to take cut of ChatGPT shopping sales in hunt for revenues
🔠 AI reveals new details about a famous Latin inscription
👀 Trump is set to unveil his AI roadmap: Here's what to know
🤓 Why Apple is playing it slow with AI
☝️ Bot powered web browsers want to help people save time. But are they effective?

Prompt of the Day 🎨

"AI's Skybound Strategists," the prompt:

Create a dramatic, high-fantasy digital painting of two powerful deities or celestial beings playing an epic game of chess in the clouds. The chessboard is glowing and floating in the sky, with swirling storm clouds and lightning all around. The chess pieces are living creatures—dragons, griffins, armored knights, and winged beasts—locked in mid-battle across the glowing squares. The gods should appear grand and mythic, wearing flowing robes or togas, deeply focused on their moves. Use golden, moody lighting and cinematic atmosphere.

OpenAI to take cut of ChatGPT shopping sales in hunt for revenues 🛒

The San Francisco-based company(Open AI) currently displays products on the platform with an option to click through links to online retailers. It also announced a partnership with payments group Shopify in April.

According to multiple people familiar with the proposals, it now aims to integrate a checkout system into ChatGPT, which ensures users complete transactions within the platform. Merchants that receive and fulfill orders in this way will pay a commission to OpenAI.

The feature is still in development, so the details may change. However, OpenAI and partners such as Shopify have been presenting early versions to brands and discussing financial terms, these people added.

Full article by Cristina Criddle, Hannah Murphy and Daniel Thomas

AI reveals new details about a famous Latin inscription 🔠

An artificial intelligence system (Aeneas system) has revealed fresh details about one of the most famous Latin inscriptions: the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, once inscribed on two bronze pillars in Rome and in copies throughout the Roman Empire.

When compared with other Latin texts, the RGDA inscription (as it is known) shares subtle language parallels with Roman legal documents and reflects “imperial political discourse,” or messaging focused on maintaining imperial power.

The study found that epigraphers — historians who study inscriptions — were significantly more accurate and faster when using the Aeneas system to help with key tasks, such as determining the likely age and location of an inscription.

“Inscriptions are among the earliest forms of writing,” Sommerschield says. “They’re precious to historians because they offer firsthand evidence of ancient thought, language, society and history.”

Full Article by Tom Metcalfe

Trump is set to unveil his AI roadmap: Here's what to know 👀

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to unveil his long-awaited AI Action Plan at a Washington D.C. event Wednesday hosted by Silicon Valley insiders, his first major address concerning artificial intelligence since he took office for the second time in January.

The plan is effectively a replacement for the Biden AI executive order, the previous administration’s AI strategy which placed a large focus on mandating AI companies to submit safety and security reports, and trying to limit racial or otherwise discriminatory bias in frontier AI models.

Some are already pushing back on Trump’s AI Action plan for allegedly putting corporate interests ahead of the public. On Tuesday, a group of more than 90 organizations including labor, environmental justice, and consumer protection non-profits published an open letter called the People’s AI Action Plan. This puts forth a series of AI policies that claim to put the interests of American citizens first, and counter what Trump is expected to announce.

Full article by Maxwell Zeff

Why Apple is playing it slow with AI 🤓

Apple is taking its time with AI. While most tech companies are racing to push out AI features as fast as they can, Apple is doing the opposite.

At this year’s WWDC, Apple showed off new AI features tied to Siri, writing tools, and app suggestions. It called the bundle “Apple Intelligence,” but those tools won’t be widely available any time soon.

To some, the delay looks like Apple falling behind.

Apple seems aware of this, making a lot of noise about being “excited” by AI, but it hasn’t forced it into every product, flooding iOS with half-baked tools.

Maybe Apple doesn’t actually believe the current wave of AI is ready? Maybe it’s not convinced the technology will hold up under real pressure. So it’s watching the chaos from a distance.

Full article by Muhammad Zulhusni

Can speed and safetly truly coexist in the AI race? ☝️

It was a clear and necessary call. But a candid reflection, posted just three weeks after he left the company, from ex-OpenAI engineer Calvin French-Owen, shows us the other half of the story.

French-Owen’s account suggests a large number of people at OpenAI are indeed working on safety, focusing on very real threats like hate speech, bio-weapons, and self-harm. Yet, he delivers the insight: “Most of the work which is done isn’t published,” he wrote, adding that OpenAI “really should do more to get it out there.”

Here, the simple narrative of a good actor scolding a bad one collapses. In its place, we see the real, industry-wide dilemma laid bare. The whole AI industry is caught in the ‘Safety-Velocity Paradox,’ a deep, structural conflict between the need to move at breakneck speed to compete and the moral need to move with caution to keep us safe.

Full article by Jasmine Cui and Angela Yang