The News

What is OpenAI?

OpenAI is not not merely a company that sells people access to its fun little chatbot (that occasionally turns people psychotic). It’s already — or plans to become — all of the following:

That’s a lot of stuff in the OpenAI org chart. When you look at their finances, the shape of OpenAI becomes a bit more clear: Based on what’s been reported, OpenAI still makes the vast majority of its income through ChatGPT subscriptions. API access kicks in a bit more. The rest of the functions? It either doesn’t exist or isn’t yet bringing in money in any ways other than funnelling back to subs.

But there’s one other number on that spreadsheet explains exactly why all those other things exist: AU$6.5 billion. That’s the amount of revenue that OpenAI booked in the first half of 2025 per the Information. That’s less than the AU$10.2 billion it spent just to keep the lights on. It’s certainly less than tens of billions of dollars it has raised so far, or the hundreds of billions it’s committed to projects in the future.

The fact that OpenAI needs to make a lot of money is hardly news. Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have been unprofitable right until the moment that they became very profitable. But I think it puts all these madcap plans to revolutionise every type of commerce into context. OpenAI doesn’t think it will win in each of these arenas, but it makes sense for it to buy as many lottery tickets as possible in the hope that one pays off.

The image that keeps coming to mind is Gromit, from Wallace and Gromit, desperately building a toy train track in front of him as he rides a train along it:

Sam Altman and OpenAI keep throwing out more plans, borrowing more money, just to get to the next idea and fundraising round. At this point, they’re too big to fail — right?

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Google’s AI search mode comes to Australia

Google is rolling out its chatbot interface for search in Australia, meaning that local searchers will start getting answers rather than the traditional ten blue links (Google blog). After first being rolled out in the US earlier this year, now Australians visiting Google will have the option to use “AI mode”. This new feature will combine different web searches, analyse photos, and serve up an AI response.

This expands on the “AI Overviews” panels that show at the top of traditional search. An ABC News article published to coincide with the launch of AI mode shows that traffic to Australian publishers has plummeted since the introduction of AI overviews, which remove the need for someone searching something to click through to the information source.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

It’s not illegal wiretapping if you can convince parliament to pass a law retrospectively making it legal

A High Court challenge to Australian police’s use of data from secret honeypot messaging app has failed (High Court PDF). Earlier this year, two South Australian alleged bikies legally challenged the admissibility of messages obtained through a supposedly encrypted messaging app that was secretly run by the AFP and FBI, claiming it was unlawfully intercepted (ABC News). The High Court unanimously found that a law passed by the parliament during the appeal process that retroactively made all AN0M messages legal confirmed that the evidence was admissible, and rejected the claim that it was an unconstitutional law.

The Sizzle: No one is going to shed any tears that alleged criminals caught using AN0M will not be able to challenge key evidence used in their prosecutions. But it is darkly funny that, facing questions whether AN0M was legal or not, parliament just passed a law that more or less said, simply, “whether or not this was lawfully obtained, it’s legal now” (Guardian). Not great lawmaking — let’s hope it doesn’t become a habit!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

If you’re reading this, your degree has been revoked

Western Sydney University students have been bombarded with scam emails claiming that their degrees have been revoked or that they’ve been kicked out of university (Cyber Daily). It sounds as though these emails have phishing links in them, and they’ve been linked to WSU’s previous hacks. Even people who say they graduated 15 years ago have been getting the emails too (feels like one of those recurring nightmares I have)!

All this goes to show that you should never check your email. (Except for the Sizzle).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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