ChatGPT-5 enters the world, Tesla AI scramble & more (August 8, 2025)

Happy Friday!

GPT-5 has officially landed for all ChatGPT users, Tesla just scrapped its Dojo AI supercomputer team, and SoftBank is buying Foxconn’s Ohio plant for a mega AI project. California’s also making a big AI workforce push.

Let’s get into it.

🤯 Major AI Moves

🆕 OpenAI launches GPT-5 for everyone

OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5 to all 700M ChatGPT users, replacing its jumble of previous models with one flagship system. The lineup includes GPT-5, GPT-5 Pro, and GPT-5 Mini. GPT-5 now uses a real-time router to toggle “thinking” on and off depending on the task, improving speed and accuracy while cutting hallucinations. Pro subscribers get longer reasoning time via parallel compute, while free users get GPT-5 under usage caps with Mini as a fallback.

🚗 Tesla disbands Dojo supercomputer team

Tesla has quietly shut down its Dojo AI supercomputer effort, a project once hyped to power self-driving breakthroughs. While Tesla says AI training will continue on Nvidia hardware, the move raises questions about its autonomy ambitions. The disbanding follows leadership changes in the AI division and comes as competition in autonomous driving heats up.

🏭 SoftBank buys Foxconn’s Ohio plant for Stargate AI push

SoftBank is acquiring Foxconn’s 6.5M-square-foot Ohio facility to accelerate its “Stargate” AI infrastructure project. The site will host massive data centers aimed at powering next-gen AI models and agentic systems. SoftBank says the investment could create thousands of jobs and position Ohio as a global AI hub.

🌍 AI for Society

🐦 Google open-sources wildlife audio AI

Google DeepMind has upgraded and open-sourced Perch, its bioacoustics model that can identify species from massive audio datasets. With double the training data, it can track everything from forest birds to coral reef life and detect rare species with minimal examples, a big win for conservationists.

📚 California partners with tech giants for AI training

Governor Gavin Newsom announced a partnership with top tech companies, including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, to prepare Californians for AI-driven jobs. The initiative will fund statewide AI literacy programs, offer free online certifications, and embed AI skills training in community colleges. The state aims to reach 1M residents in the next two years.

🛠 Tools of the Day

• NuMarkdown – An open-source reasoning model for OCR tasks
• Midjourney HD Video – 4x more pixels for AI-generated videos
• North – Cohere’s secure, customizable AI agent platform

💡 Prompt of the Day

“Analyze this product and find unbiased reviews, including potential downsides, avoiding sponsored content.”

⚡ Quick Hits

• Microsoft adds GPT-5 to Copilot with auto-switching smart mode
• xAI will open-source Grok 2 next week and add ads to responses
• Truth Social launches Perplexity-powered AI search
• MiniMax debuts Speech 2.5 voice cloning in 40 languages

📌 TLDR

OpenAI made GPT-5 universal, Tesla killed its Dojo AI team, and SoftBank is betting big on AI infrastructure in Ohio. California’s training up a million residents for AI careers, while Google and MIT show AI’s potential for environmental and medical breakthroughs.

See you tomorrow,
David