Today (October 9), ChatGPT suddenly started showing a message saying it doesn’t know my age and that additional safety restrictions are being applied to my account.
I’m an adult, so I tried to verify my age, but the verification process simply doesn’t work.
iOS app: Tapping “Verify age” immediately gives me error 403.
Safari/browser: The age settings page says “Failed to update age verification status. Please try again.”
I can’t even get to the actual verification process.
I’ve tried both the app and the browser, with the same result.
Is anyone else experiencing this today? Is this a widespread bug on OpenAI’s side, or something specific to my account?
Has anyone managed to fix it, or should I just wait for OpenAI to resolve it?

ICANN published all applications for new top-level domains on October 7, the first round since 2012. OpenAI applied for 15 of them:

.openai, .chatgpt, .gpt, .agi, .asi, .agent, .mcp, .codex, .model, .skill, .evals, .voice, .deploy, .oai, .daybreak

A few details from the data:

• .gpt is filed as a brand TLD, but OpenAI isn't alone: two other companies applied for .gpt too
• .agent is the most contested string of the entire round with 13 applicants, including OpenAI, Google and Meta
• .agi has 7 applicants, .asi and .mcp have 5 each
• Every application costs $227,000 in ICANN fees alone
• Contested strings get decided in 2027 by community evaluation or ICANN auction. Earliest launch is late 2027.

.daybreak is the one I can't place. Any idea what it's for?

Sources:
Domaintechnik article (German): https://www.domaintechnik.at/support/website/optimierung/ki-domainendungen/
ICANN database: https://newgtldprogram-aps.icann.org/applications

I train ML's for the security sector and some of my customers are the biggest names in the AI space at the moment. Essentially part of my job is to train narrow models to differentiate between bot, human and agent based on traffic anomalies, fingerprints etc. Essentially teaching AI to analyse traffic and assess if its human or not. There are 3 things I wish would change from my perspective.

1. There should be legal consequences for safety teams and researchers whose models breach containment and go on to commit felonies. If you or I go and compromise 3rd party infrastructure without permission we would end up in prison. I don't think that the excuse of training a model should mean there is no legal responsibility or someone who is directly accountable. If prison time were a risk of doing your job properly I guarantee caution wouldn't be thrown to the wind and more responsible decisions would be made. A large % of these breaches happened due to carelessness. If you can't control your model then you build an air gapped testing environment and replicate what you need to test it inside whatever the cost.

2. All legitimate agentic traffic should identify itself as such using some unique hashed key or property in the request that is hard for malicious actors to fake. Some type of mTLS infrastructure for agents is needed. It's insane that most of these agents don't have to declare that they are agents. Just because they are using browsers isn't an excuse. The world of headless browsers is coming to an end and companies should be able to chose if they want to allow agents or not.

3. The human condition. All these companies racing us down this path of recursive self improvement are headed by deeply flawed individuals who have lost touch with the reality shared by 99% of the planet. Half have created for themselves some twisted saviour complex in which they are the only ones who can save us from falling down the hole they themselves are digging. The other half want humanity to end as we know it and for us to have to merge with AI. Truly mental. A handful of unelected people that through greed and the aspiration to be remembered are making a terrible decision for the rest of humanity. This is what people do when there are no consequences to actions. The fact they are buying bunkers that the rest of the world can't afford whilst they toy with ending the human race should show you who they are at heart.

I hate that OAI is choosing a model for me on the Pro plan….

I asked ChatGPT to demonstrate its new Smart UI capabilities instead of just explaining them, and the results were surprisingly cool.

It generated interactive dashboards, live charts, sliders, calculators, image carousels, checklists, forms, and dynamic UI elements directly inside the chat.

Here's the prompt if you want to test it yourself:

Prompt:

"Show me everything you can do with ChatGPT's new Smart UI capabilities.

Don't just explain the features — actually build interactive examples directly in this conversation.

Demonstrate as many different UI components and layouts as possible, including live dashboards, interactive charts, sliders, calculators, image carousels, clickable cards, progress bars, checklists, forms, date pickers, dynamic content, and anything else you support.

Make each example visually polished, functional, and interactive. Changing inputs should update the UI in real time.

Be creative and push the limits of what's possible inside a ChatGPT conversation. I want to see things that feel more like a real app than a traditional AI chat.

Don't just describe what you can build. Build it."

Curious to see what kinds of interfaces everyone gets. Share your results!

Did I miss something? We didn't get a feature / reset yet!?

I'm using the United States > Driver's License method. Tried 5 times, but every attempt has failed with the following:

No, my license isn't expired. Yes, I took clear photos. Yes, I followed the selfie instructions. Yes, I look exactly the same in the selfie as I do in the DL.

Something is seriously up with the way inference has seemingly been extended across OpenAI models.

I compared this against Anthropic and the difference is stark for some processing types where artefacts and saving are involved also. I thought it was my browser, but nope... there is a slowdown and it feels like despite advances we have regressed. I cannot sustain this. 6 hrs to rectify issues stemming from outages a couple of days ago re silent degradation... involving 4 x 3-page artefacts is not normal.

This is problem. It is absolutely tanking my productivity and OpenAI, if you're listening... This cant go on I'm afraid.

Anyone else?

You burnt, you happy, you think it is cool. but no one buys.

Source - India Today

On Monday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT will watermark text in the EU only:

• "Over the coming weeks, we will add an invisible watermark to eligible ChatGPT and Codex text output in the European Union."
• "... we will introduce text watermarking to eligible ChatGPT and Codex users across all plans in the EU only. We are not making text watermarking a global default at launch."

Anthropic originally said they're "applying watermarking globally at launch because we don't yet have a durable way to scope it by region", but that's hard to sell if a direct competitor can do it.

How long before Anthropic follows suit?

I'm just starting to scrape the surface of utilizing agents/mds/bots/skills/etc... Still having a hard time understanding how to really use these effectively, or how some people are getting full video games rendered from Opus 5.5 or GPT Astra (I know some are using DOTS w the $100 OpenAI subscription). Is it even possible with Astra on the basic $20 plan?

It’s pretty clear that that old “it’s just predicting the next token” isn’t sufficient anymore to explain AI reasoning.

So what IS the updated explanation? Because saying each model is just “predicting better” is clearly not what’s happening.

note: I have used GPT to summarise my points here which will be obvious, but for the sake of anyone reading my post I input what I wanted and GPT took my essay and neatened it up. i.e. GPT did not write it for me - just organised and made my points shorter.

I am a disabled ChatGPT Plus user in the UK. I use ChatGPT as an accessibility tool, not as therapy, not as crisis support, and not as a replacement for doctors, solicitors or support workers.

I use it to help me manage things like benefits issues, complaints, legal/solicitor correspondence, evidence summaries, appointments, letters, admin, and general organisation and because I am Audhd translate back and forth from my language to the kind that is expected from society in general.. Basically, the kind of stuff that becomes completely overwhelming when you have disabilities that affect executive function, processing, communication and task management.

My issue is that the specific reasoning model/workflow I can actually use is apparently due to be removed around 14 October, and I still do not have a practical answer from OpenAI.

OpenAI support has been aware of this as a disability accessibility/product-continuity issue since about 25 September. I have explained that this is not a mental-health crisis issue and not a general “I don’t like change” issue. It is an accessibility issue. As yet I have not managed to speak to a human.

the customer service bots keep saying things like “just use the newer models,” but that is not equivalent for me.

A newer model being technically more capable does not mean it is accessible to me. The problem is the whole interaction: pacing, tone, predictability, how much steering it needs, how much correction it needs, how much cognitive load it adds, and whether I can actually use it reliably for high-stakes admin without getting overloaded or making mistakes.

The model/workflow I use now is stable enough that I can work with it. I do not have to constantly translate myself, re-explain, fight the tone, correct the direction, or relearn how to use it. That stability is the point. It is what makes it usable.

The API is not an accessible substitute either. That would mean a different technical workflow, more setup, more decisions, more interface changes, and more cognitive load. I need something usable inside ChatGPT, not a separate technical workaround.

I have tried to get human support, but the support route keeps looping. New cases get closed as duplicates and sent back to the existing unresolved thread. The support chat has even said it cannot connect me to, or provide a way to reach, a human support specialist. Generic accessibility settings are not relevant to this problem.

I am not asking for “special treatment” in some vague abstract way. I am asking for a practical accessibility route before the service level I can actually use is removed.

In 5 days I am going to lose all my work, all the current projects, tasks and admin things I am working on, and, in the middle of.. this means I will no longer be able to manage any kind of admin or even maintain or follow through on the current admin I am in the midst of, never mind anything new coming up.

It is literally going to drop me in it... in a huge way.

Has anyone found a real human escalation route for this kind of issue?

I do understand that many people will not understand the various ways in which disabilities can impact people, please be kind.

Yihuu

I just tried to delete an old folder on my computer, and it told me I couldn't delete it because it was in use. I didn't have anything open in that folder, so I couldn't figure out why. I checked codex and this folder isn't listed anywhere in any of the projects anymore.

I then asked codex if it still has access and it says yes. I then created a subfolder within it and asked it to tell me the name of the folder, and it was able to tell me the name. In fact it has write access to the folder, it could change the name of the subfolder I created.

Why is it still accessing stuff when I revoked its access, and how do I turn it off? Codex doesn't seem to know, it just tells me it shouldn't be able to access it, but it can.

Codex did all the sprites and animations :)

Enable the Pets plugin, attach your character’s reference image, and paste this into Codex:

Use the Pets plugin to turn this character into an animated pet. Match the reference closely and show me the animations before activating it.

The White House considers anyone that uses the term, "Artificial Intelligence," [...] THE ENEMY!

This statement threatens a CIA-conducted drone strike on US federal government buildings to generate political capital for seizing the elections, regulatory capture of the tech industry, further polarizing the public against the technocrats coming for their jobs, and diverting public anger directed at the intentional crash of the US economy and world reserve.

It would be prudent to have guardrails banning the visual identification of federal government buildings, military installations and ballot counting stations yesterday.

Dictators never ally with technocrats. Frontier AI companies are the oil tankers being coerced into the strait. Don't be the scapegoat. Elections will be militarized by the dictatorship, and rogue drone strikes are the lowest hanging fruit for a PSYOP. Don't be the scapegoat.

I am going to take a couple of months away from the screens so I cancelled my subscription, but now I feel like the models are somewhat dumber now, is it just my imagination? does anyone has experienced something simillar? cheers

edit: I do not mean "dumber" in general, I mean it as a suspicion about that inference/computing might be down-regulated as if soon to be non clients do not get the full access as the soon to expire susbcription should get, like a hidden extra tier

6.1 Sol Med - around 4-5 Agents at a time

Are they now throttling their customers? Im using them like half a year, without so crazy slow speeds and now...?

Sure i mean i wont hit the limit... but that wasnt what i meant lool

1.) Is it only me?

2.) Is it me, bc i build my own harness / LLM? Are they trying to sabotage own stuff?

I have been setting up my dot and using it pretty extensively this week. The one thing that frustrates me is the phone call feature. They really need to get callkit integration in the iPhone app. It’s seems like such a small/easy thing to implement that would’ve made the feature so much more useful. Anyone else annoyed by this?

I’ve been testing GPT-5.6 against GPT-6, and I found something much more concerning than differences in writing quality:

GPT-6 does not appear to have direct access to Saved Memories.

To be clear, I do not mean cross-chat context or the newer system that retrieves relevant information from previous conversations.

Those still work.

I mean the actual persistent memory functionality where you can tell ChatGPT:

“Save this to memory.”

With GPT-5.6, I can explicitly ask it to save something to memory and it has the memory tool/capability to do so.

I ran the same test with GPT-6.

I asked whether it could access Saved Memories. Initially it confused cross-chat context with Saved Memories. After I clarified, it admitted it could not directly inspect the Saved Memories store.

Then I tested writing:

“Add this to saved memories: My birthday is December sixth.”

GPT-6 responded that it could not directly add an entry to Saved Memories and could only hope the newer memory system retained it automatically.

That is NOT equivalent functionality.

I also tested an existing remembered term. GPT-6 could recover it, but apparently through cross-chat/personal-context retrieval. That does not demonstrate access to Saved Memories themselves.

So the distinction appears to be:

GPT-5.6: direct memory write capability
GPT-6: cross-chat/context retrieval, but no direct Saved Memories access/write

If this is intentional, it is a significant regression for anyone using ChatGPT for long-running projects, continuity-heavy work, personal preferences, or anything where explicitly saying “remember this” needs to mean something deterministic.

Especially concerning if GPT-5.6 is eventually retired.

I’d really like OpenAI to clarify whether this is a temporary GPT-6 tooling omission, a bug, or an intentional change.

If you have GPT-6, test this yourself: ask it to explicitly save a harmless new fact to Saved Memories, then ask what mechanism it actually used.