is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
Big week for OpenAI! The company is running basically every tech industry playbook, all at the same time, and it actually seems to be working. The company is adding apps to ChatGPT, in an effort to turn the chatbot into something more like an operating system. It’s offering developers new tools to add ChatGPT into their existing apps. It’s making huge, somewhat circular deals with every chip company everywhere. And, oh yeah, it’s basically building ChatGPTikTok.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk through everything OpenAI is up to. The Verge’s Hayden Field was at the Dev Day event this week, and takes David and Jake on a tour of the vibes, the announcements, and the occasionally very confusing rationale for why OpenAI is doing what it’s doing. She also tells us what she learned listening to Jony Ive talk about AI devices, which was nothing. She learned nothing.
After that, the gang discusses what’s going on with Sora, OpenAI’s popular new social network. However you feel about the AI-generated future of everything, there’s no denying that there’s something different and more compelling about Sora. We still don’t know whether the app will have staying power once the novelty wears off, but even if it doesn’t, OpenAI is pretty good at creating these cultural moments. There will be others, for better and for worse.
Finally, in the lightning round, Jake and David run through the rest of the week’s tech news. They talk Alex Cooper, Panther Lake, Apple’s malicious compliance, Starry, and more.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on OpenAI:
- OpenAI will let developers build apps that work inside ChatGPT
- ChatGPT apps are live: Here are the first ones you can try
- OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT said it will significantly evolve in the next six months.
- AMD teams up with OpenAI to challenge Nvidia’s AI chip dominance
- OpenAI and Jony Ive’s secret device won’t be ‘your weird AI girlfriend’
And on Sora:
And in the lightning round:
- From The Wall Street Journal: ‘Call Her Daddy’ Podcaster Alex Cooper Opens an Unwell Ad Agency
- A new iPhone setting will stop CarPlay from stealing your AirPods’ audio
- Here’s how Apple is locking down iPhones to comply with Texas’ age verification law
- Here is Panther Lake, Intel’s 2026 laptop chip with next-gen graphics
- Verizon buys the not-quite-5G wireless ISP Starry to expand wireless broadband
- Facebook is turning into TikTok
