Hard Numbers: ChatGPTers double, Japan’s AI military, Google’s AI pop-ups, Magic money, Musk vs. Brazil

ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen is seen in this illustration photo taken in Milano, Italy, on February 21 2023
ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen is seen in this illustration photo taken in Milano, Italy, on February 21 2023
Mairo Cinquetti/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

200 million: OpenAI says it now counts 200 million weekly users of ChatGPT, which has doubled in the past year. It also claims that 92% of Fortune 500 companies use its products for writing, coding, and organizational help.

59 billion: Japan’s military is having a recruitment problem. With only 10,000 of its citizens enlisting this year — half of its target — the government is investing $59 billion, a 7% yearly increase, to add additional capabilities including artificial intelligence. It’s spending $123 million alone on an AI surveillance system for its military bases.

17: A new report from the consultancy Authoritas found that Google is offering its AI Overviews — those pop-up AI-generated answers to users’ Googled questions — on 17% of user queries. The search engine company came under fire for its inaccurate AI-generated responses earlier this year and since then has reportedly reduced the frequency with which its suggested answers pop up.

320 million: The startup Magic, whose AI models generate computer code and automate software, raised $320 million in a funding round from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. The San Francisco-based firm also announced a partnership with Google to build two new supercomputers on the tech giant’s cloud platform.

24: X is now shut down in Brazil, the escalation of a legal dispute between the company’s owner, Elon Musk, and the country’s top court. Musk has criticized Brazil for requesting the company remove certain accounts. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Friday gave Musk 24 hours to name a legal representative in the country or else face a national ban. Musk refused and, in response, posted an AI-generated image of de Moraes behind bars, writing, “One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”

More from GZERO Media

In this episode of the “Energized: The Future of Energy” podcast, Lisa Raitt, vice chair of Global Investment Banking for CIBC Capital Markets and former Canadian parliamentarian, discusses the concrete changes needed for the energy transition. In a conversation with host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel, she explains how businesses and governments can collaborate to create a more sustainable and affordable energy future, examining the practical implications of this shift in real-world situations. Listen to this episode at gzeromedia.com/energized, or on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

- YouTube

"Artificial intelligence is the opportunity of our generation, but it is an existential threat," UN Secretary-General António Guterres saidin an exclusive GZERO World interview with Ian Bremmer, who is one of the 39 experts on the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, they discuss the advisory group's upcoming report "“Governing AI for Humanity,” and why Guterres believes the UN is the only organization capable of creating a truly global, inclusive framework for AI.

Philemon Yang, president of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, speaks at the opening of the UN General Assembly's 79th session at the UN headquarters on Sept. 10, 2024.
Wang Fan/China News Service/VCG via Reuters

GZERO will be on the ground at this year's UN General Assembly, providing coverage on high-level meetings and big speeches from leaders set to begin on Sept. 24. We’ll also be giving you an inside look at the Summit of the Future, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres says is a once-in-a-generation chance to create more effective and inclusive institutions.

People gather outside a hospital as more than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024.
REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

People of a certain age will recall the metaphoric expression “blowing up my pager,” but this was something altogether more literal: On Tuesday at around 3:30 p.m. local time, pagers belonging to more than 2,800 people in Lebanon and Syria actually blew up, killing at least 12, including two children, and wounding thousands.

A Ukrainian serviceman commemorates his brothers-in-arms at a makeshift memorial for fallen Ukrainian soldiers on the Day of Remembrance of Ukraine's Defenders, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 29, 2024
(Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto)
Indian paramilitary soldiers stand alert while Jammu and Kashmir National Conference candidate Mubarak Gul arrives to file his nomination papers for assembly elections in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on September 2, 2024.
(Photo by Firdous Nazir/NurPhoto)

The Indian-occupied region of Kashmir kicks off its first phase of elections on Wednesday for its own truncated government and local legislative assembly, as New Delhi reintroduces some local authority after taking direct control in 2019.