02−16%6 h
On 30 September 2026, The Decoder and The Verge reported that Google was paying around 100 digital publishers for content used in AI Overviews, AI Mode and the Gemini chatbot, through a pilot launched less than a year earlier. According to The Information, participating publishers are paid according to their content's contribution to these AI features. Revenues vary sharply: several small and medium-sized blogs and websites receive less than 0.1% of their advertising income, with smaller sites earning under $1,000 over several months. Some publishers have received $50,000–$60,000 over a few months, while one early participant earned more than $1 million in a year. On 1 October, Ars Technica reported that several smaller sites put these payments at roughly one-thousandth of their advertising revenue, and some large sites were refusing to participate while seeking better terms. Google had long resisted direct payments to websites, arguing that traffic in exchange for scraping content already constituted an exchange.
03−15%6 h
On 29 September 2026, OpenAI held DevDay 2026 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Ahead of the event, The Verge reported that OpenAI was trailing in consumer AI agents and expected it to unveil its own agent, Aeon, competing with Meta’s Muse, SpaceX’s Grok Bot and OpenClaw. OpenAI later published an official recap covering more than 20 updates across GPT-6 Astra, ChatGPT, Codex, APIs and safety, but provided only an overview. Simon Willison liveblogged the keynote. From 30 September, TechCrunch and The Decoder reported that ChatGPT plugins had expanded into app-like experiences with a sidebar entry, interactive panels and file viewers, and that Codex had introduced cloud development environments reusable across devices. ChatGPT also gained the Plugin Extensions system, shared Space, collaborative Pages and Slides, Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations, automated workflows and an enterprise marketplace. TechCrunch said colleagues in Space could collaborate with chatbots and the new agent role Dots. OpenAI announced more than 1.2 billion weekly active ChatGPT users, over 35 million combined weekly active users for ChatGPT Work and Codex, and 2.5 million enterprise customers. Latent Space reported the launches of persistent Dots agents, GPT-6.1 Sol, Ultrafast mode, the Decisions API, ChatGPT Spaces and Marketplace. Earlier reports expected Aeon, whereas later reports described Dots; the initial official recap mentioned GPT-6 Astra, while later reports named GPT-6.1 Sol.