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The Nintendo Indie World Showcase for August has officially wrapped, and those 15 minutes were jam-packed full of announcements for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

While we didn't see the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong, there were plenty of other indies to get excited for, including several metroidvania-style games, a new debut project featuring Celeste's pixel artist, and multiple titles that are available starting today.

In case you missed it, here's everything that was announced during the latest Indie World Showcase.

From the developers of Shovel Knight, Mina the Hollower is coming to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on October 31, 2025.

In this game, you play as Mina, a renowned Hollower, on a quest to save a cursed island. It's an action-adventure experience that shares the same pixel art style and music as Yacht Club Games' previous games, featuring environmental hazards, monsters, and a customizable gear set.

A demo is available today.

Well Dweller is a dark fairytale, metroidvania-style game from the creator of Crypt Custodian and Islets, featuring 2D platforming, sidescrolling mechanics, and scary-looking boss fights.

Announced for Nintendo Switch and releasing in 2026, you play as Glimmer, a tiny bird armed with a matchstick, who must burn the wicked queen to save his family before they become part of her royal gown.

On your journey, you'll meet new characters and reunite all your sheltered siblings, snatched from the nest one night in a turn of events that lead to the coming of an unlikely, little hero.

Neverway is a debut game developed by Coldblood Inc., a studio co-founded by the pixel artist behind the award-winning Celeste and TowerFall, and featuring an original soundtrack by Disasterpeace.

"After quitting her dead-end job, Fiona starts over on a farm and becomes the immortal herald of a dead god," the game description reads. "Make friends, fight through horrors, and pay off your debt in Neverway, a nightmarish life sim RPG."

The game is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2026.

Herdling is a brand new game from Okomotive, the creators of the acclaimed FAR games and the publishers of Firewatch.

In this adventure, you set out on a grand alpine expedition with a herd of mysterious beasts called Calicorns. As you ascend the mountain path, you'll encounter eerie dangers, obstacles, and beautiful views.

It's your mission to guide and protect the Calicorns while avoiding dangers and solving environmental puzzles.

Described as "an emotional, wordless tale of trust, survival, and companionship during a great crossing through a fallen world", Herdling is heading to the Nintendo Switch and PC on August 21, 2025.

Available on Nintendo Switch today, Is This Seat Taken? is a cozy puzzle game where you must play seating matchmaking with multiple characters in social situations.

"Your mission is to organize groups of people according to their preferences," the trailer description reads. "Whether it’s the cinema, a crowded bus, a wedding reception, or a cramped taxicab, every setting introduces new characters with specific tastes.

"A party guest with a sensitive nose won’t be happy sitting next to a stranger who’s wearing too much cologne. A sleepy passenger won’t be happy trying to nap on the bus next to someone listening to loud music. It’s all about reading the room to find the perfect placement!"

Little Kitty, Big City was released last year for Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, but today's announcement comes in the form of The Picture Purrfect update, which is arriving later this year.

With this free content update, a cat customizer has been added, along with new areas to explore, new and familiar friends to meet, and additional photo mode options.

After first releasing on PC and taking the livestreaming space by storm in 2024, Content Warning is officially heading to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.

This online co-operative hit combines action roguelike mechanics with horror, tasking you with filming "scary stuff" with friends to try and go viral on SpöökTube.

Every run in the Old World lasts for three days; the more scary the stuff you film, the more you go viral. Ad revenue from your SpöökTube videos also allows you and your teammates to upgrade your gear to film better videos and survive more easily.

Ball x Pitt is a brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite, inspired by games like Vampire Survivors. Featuring a low-poly, pixel art style, there'll be over 60 randomized balls to equip that can be used by ricocheting them off hordes of enemies.

Each level will offer new challenges and boss fights, characters to meet, and riches to earn that can be used to expand your homestead.

Ball x Pitt launches on October 15, 2025, for Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. It's also coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in Fall 2025.

A free demo is available now.

Ultimate Sheep Raccoon is an adorable eight-player, bike-racing party game where you and your friends build courses and race against obstacles and dangerous traps.

It's coming to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in Winter 2025.

Glaciered is an action-adventure game developed by Japanese indie studio Studio Snowblind.

Set 65 million years in the future, the world has frozen over, caused by the Everwinter, and the oceans have been sealed under a thick layer of ice. New species dwell under the glacier-covered seas called Tuai, descended from birds and successors of the dinosaurs.

You play as a Tuai who explores the underwater world, fighting marine creatures with real-time, dynamic combat to protect the new Ice Age.

Glacieredis launches on Nintendo Switch 2 as a timed console exclusive this winter. The game is coming to Steam, with a "Q3 2025" release window.

This cozy woodland game from Pine Creek Games will find you surviving the harsh winter and rebuilding your childhood burrow as a mouse. Gather, craft, bake, meet the locals, and try to stay warm.

Winter Burrow launches on Nintendo Switch this winter.

In Undusted: Letters of the Past, you play as Adora, who returns to her childhood home after her mother’s passing. While tidying the abandoned house, she uncovers and restores old mementos, and fragments of a forgotten past slowly come back together.

"Leave no item undusted, and awaken memories long buried in dust to find meaning in the present."

The game launches on Nintendo Switch in October 2025. A PC release is also planned.

Tiny Bookshop is a cozy, narrative management game where you must stock and run your tiny second-hand bookshop with different books and items, and set up shop in scenic locations.

You can customize your shop with collectible items like plants and candles, recommend the right book to the right customer, befriend Bookstonbury's quirky cast of characters and help them out, stock your shelves, and more.

Tiny Bookshop rolls onto Nintendo Switch and PC today.

The award-winning Caves of Qud is officially heading to Nintendo Switch in late 2025.

The game, which originally released on PC in 2024, is a science fantasy roguelike where players must chisel through thousands of years of civilizations, all while surviving a deeply simulated world of sentient plants, mutant kindred, and retrofuturist cataclysm.

In Strange Antiquities, you play as the custodian of a store dealing in occult antiquities. It's up to you to find and identify arcane artefacts and use them to aid fellow townsfolk.

The cozy simulation game arrives on September 17, 2025, for Nintendo Switch and PC.

OPUS: Prism Peak is a narrative-driven adventure game that finds you in the shoes of a weary, middle-aged photojournalist who has left behind city life, only to find yourself stranded in an ethereal mountain inhabited by spirits.

You encounter a spirit girl who has no memory of who she is. As their journey unfolds, her presence offers a different angle that helps him see the world more clearly.

"To uncover the secrets of this mystical world and find your way back home, you must gather clues and unravel its secrets—with nothing but an old camera in hand.

"Tweak your camera’s aperture, shutter, and focus to capture what each spirit longs to see. Offer your photos to the sacred flame, and they will answer with guidance."

The game launches on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC this Fall.

Go-Go Town! is currently an early access game on Steam and also offers a demo.

In this sandbox city builder, you landed the job of mayor of a crumbling city. Like similar city builders, you must build and manage everything in your town, assign workers, plot out zoning, and more until it's thriving.

You can play solo, but there's also an option for co-op.

The game is heading to Nintendo Switch in Spring 2026.

In UFO 50, you can play a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games that span a variety of genres, including platformers, shoot 'em ups, puzzle games, roguelites, and role-playing games (RPGs).

"As you journey through the library, make connections and learn more about UFO Soft, the fictional 80s company behind the games, as well as their expansive shared universe that includes sequels and recurring characters," developer Moss Mouth said.

The indie was released on PC in 2024, but is now available on Nintendo Switch.

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• Experts warn Akira is using SonicWall VPNs to deploy two drivers
• One is a legitimate, vulnerable driver that allows the other one to be executed
• The other one disables antivirus and endpoint protection tools

Akira ransomware has dominated the headlines recently due to its abuse of SonicWall SSL VPNs to gain initial access and deploy an encryptor.

However, while initial access is important, it is still not enough to infect a device, especially if it’s protected by an antivirus, or an endpoint protection and response solution (EDR).

Now, security researchers from Guidepoint Security believe they have seen exactly how Akira disables security solutions, which allows them to drop the ransomware.

In a recent report, researchers from Guidepoint outlined how Akira is engaged in a bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver (BYOD) attack, using the initial access to drop two drivers, one of which is legitimate.

“The first driver, rwdrv.sys, is a legitimate driver for ThrottleStop. This Windows-based performance tuning and monitoring utility is primarily designed for Intel CPUs,” the researchers explained. “It is often used to override CPU throttling mechanisms, improve performance, and monitor processor behavior in real time.”

The second driver, hlpdrv.sys is registered as a service but when executed, it modifies the DisableAntiSpyware settings of Windows Defender within the system registry.

“We assess that the legitimate rwdrv.sys driver may be used to enable the execution of the malicious hlpdrv.sys driver, though we have been unable to reproduce the exact mechanism of action at this time," the experts said.

Multiple researchers have observed attacks coming from SonicWall SSL VPN’s, and since some of the instances were fully patched, they have speculated the threat actors could be exploiting a zero-day vulnerability.

However, in a statement shared with TechRadar Pro, SonicWall said that the criminals were actually exploiting an n-day vulnerability.

“Based on current findings, we have high confidence that this activity is related to CVE-2024-40766, which was previously disclosed and documented in our public advisory SNWLID-2024-0015, not a new zero-day or unknown vulnerability,” the company said.

“The affected population is small, fewer than 40 confirmed cases, and appears to be linked to legacy credential use during migrations from Gen 6 to Gen 7 firewalls. We’ve issued updated guidance, including steps to change credentials and upgrade to SonicOS 7.3.0, which includes enhanced MFA protections.”

Via BleepingComputer

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• Google has confirmed suffering a data breach
• The attack was carried out by ShinyHunters, once again hijacking systems
• The group apparently snuck into a Salesforce instance

Cybercriminals known as ShinyHunters (UNC6040) recently broke into Google and stole business customer information from one of its corporate Salesforce instances, the company has confirmed.

In a blog post breaking down ShinyHunters’ modus operandi, the company somewhat played down the importance of the incident, noting the miscreants didn’t really grab anything sensitive, or of particular value.

“In June, one of Google’s corporate Salesforce instances was impacted by similar UNC6040 activity described in this post,” the company said, “the data retrieved by the threat actor was confined to basic and largely publicly available business information, such as business names and contact details.”

ShinyHunters is a threat actor that targets corporate Salesforce instances, by impersonating company staff and calling IT support on the phone.

During the call, they tell the IT technician that they lost access to their work platform and manage to convince them to change the login credentials.

Although it might sound trivial, the technique seems to be working rather well, as multiple organizations have recently reported losing sensitive data to the same group, in the same manner.

Google did not say how many companies were affected by the breach, and declined commenting further. We don’t know if ShinyHunters reached out with a ransom demand in exchange for destroying the stolen files.

Currently, ShinyHunters is one of the most active threat actors, and probably among the most successful ones.

In recent weeks, the group managed to break into both Pandora and insurance giant Allianz Life, and has also taken credit for breaches at AT&T, Santander, Ticketmaster, and many others.

The group does not deploy an encryptor, and is rather just focused on data exfiltration, making it one of several ransomware groups which have recently pivoted away from encrypting files, a process that is apparently expensive and time-consuming.

Via TechCrunch

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• Sony's chief financial officer Lin Tao has admitted that its current live-service strategy "is not entirely going smoothly"
• Tao said, despite Concord's shutdown and Marathon's delay, she still believes in Sony's strategy but will learn from its mistakes
• Live-service games accounted for 40% of Sony's first-party software revenue in Q1, but "for the full year it's a little less, probably between 20-30%"

Sony has admitted that its current live-service strategy "is not entirely going smoothly" following the disastrous launch of Concord, but says it will continue with its plan and learn from its mistakes.

During a recent Q&A session after the company's latest financial results (via VGC), one caller asked the panel of executives for an update on PlayStation's live-service strategy amid the delay of Marathon and following the shutdown of Concord.

In response, Sony's chief financial officer Lin Tao said that she still believes in live-service games, despite recent negativity, explaining that other games like Helldivers 2 and Destiny 2 have managed to produce a steady revenue stream that didn't exist five years ago.

"Last year Concord [shut down], and this year Marathon was postponed, so somewhat negative news has been coming out," said Tao (via an interpreter).

"But if we look at the past five years, five years ago live service games were almost non-existent for PlayStation Studios. We [now] have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show, and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie’s Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner."

During the presentation, it was revealed that live service games accounted for 40% of first-party software revenue for Q1 and "for the full year it's a little less, probably between 20-30%".

"So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years, you see that there’s definitely been a change," Tao added.

"Of course, we recognise that there are still many issues, so we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there’s less waste and it’s more smooth."

Concord was shut down just two weeks after its launch due to poor sales and a low player count.

At the time, game director Ryan Ellis said Firewalk Studios was exploring options, had ceased the sale of Concord, and offered refunds to all PS5 and PC players.

While this live-service game overwhelmingly underperformed, PlayStation's Helldivers 2 was a massive success, selling 12 million copies in its first 12 weeks on sale. The game was so popular at release that Arrowhead was forced to increase its concurrent player cap to 700,000 after it breezed past 450,000.

Developer Arrowhead Game Studios also recently announced that the Sony-published game will launch on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on August 26, 2025.

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Prime Video is one of the best streaming services out there, but it's also not the cheapest, which is why it's great to see that its 30-day free trial is still up for grabs.

That’s a huge draw for entertainment junkies, giving potential new subscribers an entire month to catch award-winning Amazon Originals, live sports and whole host of movies, including recent Oscar winners like Anora, for free.

• Prime Video free trial: sign up to get it now!

Signing up is easy, there’s tons to watch, and a paid membership doesn’t have to break the bank once the Prime Video free trial has come to an end. Indeed, there's so much to uncover – just look at our best Prime Video shows and best Prime Video movies roundups for the biggest and best titles.

I've really been enjoying Prime Video, especially since the streamer adapted my favorite video game series, Fallout, for the small screen. With Fallout season 2 and other great Prime Video Originals like The Wheel of Time and The Rings of Power impressing audiences, it's worth sticking around beyond your free trial.

If you’re new to Amazon Prime, or it’s been over twelve months since you were a Prime member, then the 30-day Prime Video free trial is available. It’s even better for students, who are entitled to an incredible 6 months of free streaming.

Signing up is easy, just follow the bullet points below:

• Go to Prime Video
• Select ‘Try Prime’
• Sign in to your Amazon account
• Follow the on-screen instructions if prompted

Your Amazon account will need a current, valid credit card linked to it. But, as long as you cancel your membership before the free trial period expires, you won't be charged.

In the US, Amazon Channels often provide a seven-day trial too, letting you explore a la carte options like Cinemax. But you need to be a fully-fledged, Amazon Prime subscription member to get those.

To get started, head to the Prime Video site or download the app on your tablet or phone. If you're a new customer, you'll be prompted to "start your 30-day free trial", which you can click on to navigate to the next step.

If you already have an Amazon account but you've never used Prime Video, you can sign in to continue to your free trial. If you're a new customer, you'll be prompted to sign up for an Amazon account where you'll provide details like your email, shipping address, and preferred billing card details. You will also complete a small captcha puzzle to verify you are human.

Finally, you'll be taken to this screen which prompts you to add a billing card for when your 30-day free trial ends. Once you've done this, you'll be redirected to start your trial. Remember to cancel before your 30-day period is up if you don't want to get charged!

There’s plenty to feast your eyes on with thousands of movies and TV series. It has classic Hollywood fare licensing movies like It’s A Wonderful Life, brooding modern thrillers – like You Were Never Really Here and Zodiac, for example – and plenty of comedies and feel-good indie flicks.

Prime Video is packed with great Prime Video Originals too, including Hunters, Fleabag and The Boys to name only a few. Then there’s a slew of hugely anticipated releases like the Gen V, as well as Mr. and Mrs.Smith.

Meanwhile, sports fans can enjoy live matches and docuseries like All or Nothing. And, if some of your favorite programming is missing, chances are you’ll find it via Amazon Channels. There are more than 100 you can subscribe to, such as HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Shudder, which often provide their own 7-day free trial.

Much like Netflix, the content available does vary from country to country. So the best way to see exactly what's on offer where you are is to head to Amazon and grab that 30-day free trial.

Amazon Prime – which bundles together Prime Video, unlimited music, free delivery, and more – typically costs $14.99 a month in the US and £8.99 in the UK, AU$9.99 in Australia and €8.99 in Europe.

If you pay for a full annual membership, you can save a decent chunk of change, all the while getting lightning-fast delivery and multi-media entertainment all year round.

Plan

Monthly

Annually

Standard

$14.99 / £8.99 / AU$9.99 per month

$139 / £95 / AU$79 annually

Ad-free

$17.98 / £11.98 / AU$12.98

$174.88 / £130.88 / AU$114.88

Prime Video can be watched in over 200 countries and territories, giving access to both Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscriptions to anyone with a compatible device.

The only places it's not available is Mainland China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Russia, Belarus, Syria, and Vietnam. 

Yes, in the US you can sign up for Prime for Young Adults, a six month free trial which gives you access to free shipping, access to Prime Video and Amazon Music.

You are eligible for this deal if you are a currently enrolled student, or between the ages of 18-24. It lasts until you turn 25, or graduate. After that sixth month trial, Prime for Young Adults members are charged a monthly payment of $7.49 unless cancelled.

In the UK, you can sign up for a similar subscription called Prime Student which entitles you to the same benefits, and entitles you to a six month free trial. You’ll need to be enrolled at a UK university with a .ac.uk email address to be eligible, and after the trial you'll pay £4.49 a month.

1. Go to Amazon.com
2. Go to Account & Settings, then select the Your Account tab.
3. If it's a Prime Video-only subscription, select End Subscription.
4. To cancel your whole Amazon Prime subscription, go to Prime Membership Settings, Manage Subscription, then choose to End Subscription.

When Prime Video launched back in 2016, it cost $8.99 /  £7.99 / AU$8.99 per month, and it has gone up since then thanks to the addition of a new tier.

In 2024, Prime Video did see a price hike as the streaming service introduced a new ad-supported tier. This meant that those wanting to watch without ads would have to pay an additional $2.99 / £2.99 / AU$2.99 per month.

It's the one we've all been waiting for – ChatGPT-5 is will be released in the next few hours! Earlier in the week OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased that "something big" was coming on Friday, but then today the OpenAI account on X.com tweeted: "LIVE5TREAM THURSDAY 10AM PT".

Notice the use of a 5 instead of an "S" in the word "LIVE5TREAM"? That can mean only one thing: ChatGPT-5 is coming!

With a livestream kicking off at 10AM PT, 1PM ET, and 6PM BST, we'll embed the watch link as soon as it's live below, and TechRadar will bring you the news as it breaks.

So what can we expect? Well, the speculation is that ChatGPT-5 models (the names of a few of which have already been leaked) will be leaps and bounds ahead of the ChatGPT-4 models that we currently use in terms of performance.

What we don't know yet is which of the various OpenAI subscription offerings will get access to the new ChatGPT-5 models first, and will it be available to free users as well? We'll keep you up to date with the latest news as it breaks here.

As we sit down with snacks and drinks watching the screen and waiting for a live stream to appear for the imminent launch of ChatGPT-5 it appears that a leak on GitHub has revealed the name of the different ChatGPT-5 models.

It looks like we will have gpt-5, designed for logic and multi-step tasks, .gpt-5-mini, a lightweight version for cost-sensitive applications, gpt-5-nano, which is Optimized for speed and ideal for applications requiring low latency, and gpt-5-chat, designed for advanced, natural, multimodal, and context-aware conversations for enterprise applications.

Sam Altman has confounded the Internet once again by posting a picture of what appears to be the Death Star from Star Wars rising menacingly from behind a planet.

pic.twitter.com/1u0MOGvJWUAugust 7, 2025

Everybody is a bit confused by the meaning of this, so, who better to ask what it could mean than rival AI, Grok?

When asked what the image could mean, Grok replied: "Sam Altman's image of the Death Star symbolizes the rise of immensely powerful AI, like the anticipated GPT-5—a transformative force with potential risks, echoing Star Wars' superweapon. It's likely teasing OpenAI's next big breakthrough."

Sam Altman followed up his mysterious Death Star image post on X.com with a more down-to-earth statement in his next post:

"Our livestream tomorrow at 10 am PDT will be longer than usual, around an hour. We have a lot to show and hope you can find the the time to watch!"

our livestream tomorrow at 10 am PDT will be longer than usual, around an hour.we have a lot to show and hope you can find the the time to watch!August 7, 2025

To be honest Sam, an hour is not that long to reveal the details of what could potentially be the new standard in AI chatbots, so I think you should take as long as you need.

At first, Sam Altman posting a picture of the Death Star in relation to the launch of ChatGPT-5, his own product, seemed like an odd way to market something to me. I mean, what's he trying to say? Is it, "This thing is so scary it could destroy a planet"?

However, when you view it in context of the things he has recently said about AI creating new and unparalleled security risks and that fact that he finds ChatGPT-5 scary, it fits in. On the one hand, Altman is always pushing the narrative of how great AI will be for the future of the world and for the next generation, but at the same time he's always talking about how AI has the potential to be dangerous.

This new type of marketing, where he both praises and criticizes his own product, is certainly nothing new for him, and perhaps it reframes the narrative and puts him ahead of OpenAI's critics? Whatever his reasons, it certainly seems to be working.

As I wait with bated breath for the release of ChatGPT-5 (at 10am PT), I'm thinking about what Sam Altman said just a few days ago. "We have a ton of stuff to launch over the next couple of months – new models, products, features, and more”.

So, earlier this week, OpenAI dropped its gpt-oss models, which are designed to run entirely on laptops and phones. In a few short hours, we'll get ChatGPT-5, but what next? The next couple of months are a long time, which means we might see quite a few new features being released.

John-Anthony Disotto here, taking over from Graham while he gets fed and watered. I decided the best way to get a glimpse of GPT-5's capabilities would be to ask ChatGPT itself what we can expect during today's livestream.

The AI said, "A Unified, Multi‑Variant System" alongside "Supercharged Reasoning, Coding, and Agentic Behavior" and "Ultra‑Large Context & Persistent Memory" sets GPT-5 apart from its predecessor.

Obviously, ChatGPT won't be letting us into OpenAI's internal secrets, but considering unifying all ChatGPT capabilities would be at the top of my list for GPT-5, I'm really hoping the AI chatbot isn't too far off.

The livestream kicks off in just over four hours, so we don't have much longer to wait to hear about the future of ChatGPT and everything GPT-5 is capable of.

holy hell pic.twitter.com/ausKp4vancAugust 7, 2025

Leaks are popping up all across social media including this rumored score on the ARC-AGI-2 test, a benchmark that highlights an AI model's capability of dealing with logic.

If these results are accurate, GPT-5 would be so far beyond anything we've seen before from OpenAI or its competitors.

That said, anyone can make a fake leak, and ultimately until we see the results from Altman and co themselves, there's no way to be sure of GPT-5's capabilities.

Just imagine though...

With just over three hours until the OpenAI livestream, we've started to ask other AI tools what they think about GPT-5. After all, who doesn't want to hear AI's thoughts on its own evolution, right?

Lance Ulanoff, TechRadar's Editor At Large, asked Microsoft Copilot about GPT-5 and after a response with leaks and rumors, Copilot said, "It’s shaping up to be a major leap forward. If you could design your own GPT-5 variant, what would it specialize in—creativity, emotional intelligence, or something else entirely?"

Lance replied: "Emotional intelligence, for sure. Have you tried GPT-5?"

Copilot responded, "I haven’t tried GPT-5 myself—since I’m not a user, I don’t get to 'use' other models. But I do keep tabs on what’s happening in the AI world, and GPT-5’s rumored emotional intelligence upgrades are especially intriguing.

If it’s anything like what’s been hinted, it could:

Read tone and subtext more accurately in conversations

Respond with empathy and nuance, even in complex emotional situations

Adapt its personality to match the user’s mood or communication style

Support mental health applications with more sensitivity and care

Imagine an AI that not only understands what you say, but also how you feel when you say it. That’s a whole new level of connection. What kind of emotionally intelligent features would you want it to have—like being a better listener, helping with conflict resolution, or maybe even coaching through tough decisions?"

WOAH. This is probably all a pipe dream but Copilot has thought up a future OpenAI model that completely evolves ChatGPT's emotional intelligence. Is this something you'd be interested in?

Dropping soon. pic.twitter.com/WSuOn3qE6yAugust 7, 2025

OpenAI just tweeted a GPT-5 teaser, and as the name would suggest it doesn't give us any real insight other than the fact that it's likely going to replace GPT-4o.

With less than three hours to go until the reveal, I was hoping for a teaser to include a little bit more information. I guess not today.

New images have appeared online detailing a ChatGPT Go subscription, likely to sit between free tier users and ChatGPT Plus subscriptions.

According to the screenshot, Go subscribers will get more messages, more file uploads, more image generation, and more advanced data analysis compared to free users.

This does add a slight concern to the future of ChatGPT's free tier. Does this mean we'll all be paying for the AI we've become accustomed to using for free at some point? I sure hope not...

OpenAI's AI model naming scheme is confusing. There's 4o, o3, o3-mini, o3-high, just to name a few.

In a few hours, at least four more models will be added to the mix, and it begs the question: At what point will OpenAI's marketing step up and make ChatGPT more user-friendly?

If the company chooses to add another subscription tier with the aforementioned ChatGPT Go, not only will we have an AI model naming issue, but users will start to get confused by subscription tiers, too.

Please, OpenAI, fix your naming scheme.

Only two hours until the GPT-5 reveal, and we still don't have a livestream link on YouTube to share.

As soon as OpenAI adds a listing for the livestream, we'll be sure to add it to this live blog, so stay tuned as we delve into the future of AI (and ChatGPT).

It's only been two weeks since OpenAI revealed ChatGPT Agent in a livestream, and yet here we are waiting for what many believe to be the next generation of AI model.

Is GPT-5 really going to be as impressive as its next generation name would suggest? Or are we going to see small performance improvements in line with an iterative upgrade?

Either way, OpenAI needs to showcase why users should care about GPT-5 in this upcoming livestream, and so far the company's livestreams have been anything but engaging.

With less than 90 minutes until the reveal, we're all getting excited here at TechRadar. After all this could be the ChatGPT upgrade that pushes AI even further into the future.

One last look before everything changes - again. pic.twitter.com/P4y0iUvjihAugust 7, 2025

I've been moaning about the OpenAI model names for what feels like an eternity at this point, so I may as well add one last criticism before we move into the GPT-5 era.

My colleague Lance Ulanoff has shared an image of the ChatGPT model selection page as it stands right now, and quite honestly, it might just be the most confusing naming scheme on the planet.

In just over an hour, OpenAI will announce GPT-5 alongside other models that we believe to be called GPT-5-mini, GPT-5-nano, and GPT-5-chat. Hopefully, the company decides to add these new models and replace the likes of GPT-4o, o3, o4-mini, o4-mini-high, otherwise, the list in that image is going to get even longer and even more confusing.

One hour to go until OpenAI reveals GPT-5 and we enter into the next generation of ChatGPT.

OpenAI still hasn't got a livestream listing on YouTube yet but stay tuned to this liveblog and we'll update with a link as soon as we have access.

We're just under 30 minutes until OpenAI tells us everything about GPT-5 and the livestream for the event is now appearing on YouTube. Though it's just a countdown and a still teaser image showing "GPT-5" and "OpenAI" in front of a colorful array of gradients.

You can see the livestream embedded above, and once it starts, you can watch it right from there.

I just checked my ChatGPT Plus account one more time before this event kicks off, and still no sign of GPT-5. Just a long list of models, and as my colleague John-Anthony already wrote here, it could use a bit of a cleanup and streamlining.

I'm particularly excited about GPT-5's rumored capability of automatically selecting the right model to handle the prompt or whatever the user has asked. That could speed things up before the AI even gets to work.

While we wait for the livestream to kick off on OpenAI's YouTube channel – and in the video above – the description of the video does give us a bit more detail. We've already known, thanks to a post on X from Sam Altman, that this will be a longer livestream, and there will be many, many presenters.

Here's what the description reads: "Join Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Sebastien Bubeck, Mark Chen, Yann Dubois, Brian Fioca, Adi Ganesh, Oliver Godement, Saachi Jain, Christina Kaplan, Tina Kim, Elaine Ya Le, Felipe Millon, Michelle Pokrass, Jakub Pachocki, Max Schwarzer, Rennie Song, Ruochen Wang as they introduce and demo GPT-5."

Further, if you had any doubt that we'd be seeing GPT-5 today, this confirms it will be unveiled and demoed.

OpenAI has officially kicked off the livestream with under 10 minutes to go until 1PM ET/ 6PM BST. Right now, we have some sonically soothing sounds over "OpenAI Summer Update" flashing with colors and then spinning in circles on the screen. No mention of GPT-5 though.

The visuals have changed again, and we're now counting down from three minutes until the start. The music is also getting a bit more exciting with more sounds joining in.

And here we go, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is walking onto a stage, and that's certainly a different setting than previous livestreams.

Altman is wasting no time, saying that they're ushering in GPT-5 and it's another important step to AGI. He believes that folks will enjoy using GPT-5 a lot more. Why? Well, the early sell here, as Altman puts it, is that chatting or talking with GPT-5 is like talking to an expert, and it can even write software on demand.

Now, we're getting a closer look at GPT-5 from more team members at OpenAI. Here's the kicker, also, OpenAI says that GPT-5 will even be available for free users.

As for what we'll see during this livestream, we'll be getting plenty of demos but are starting first with evaluations. OpenAI has just announced that GPT-5 has set a new level on several benchmarks, including SWE-Bench – it's not the full story, but it's a good tell of the performance here.

A key area of focus with GPT-5 was improving reliability and being accurate with facts. OpenAI is also saying that it has specifically focused on reliability in health.

Here's some good news – OpenAI is rolling out GPT-5 to all users, with that process beginning today, including the Free tier as well as Plus and Pro subscribers. It won't be a free-for-all with GPT-5 in the free tier, but you'll be able to use it until allotments are hit. Plus and Pro subscribers will expectedly get higher rate limits.

We're now getting our first demo of GPT-5, first with the model being asked to explain the Bernoulli effect, and it responded pretty quickly. The follow-up, though, is asking GPT-5 to create a visual, and OpenAI is explaining that it will take a bit longer to respond, and in that time also suggest the best course of action.

You can also ask GPT-5 to 'think harder' or 'more precisely' in the actual prompt. Even neater, you can see GPT-5's thought process while it's answering the prompt.

And like that, GPT-5 completed the prompt and coded the demo, which the OpenAI team is now testing during the live-stream. Pretty, pretty fast.

For the next demo, OpenAI is pitting GPT-4o and GPT-5 against each other in writing a eulogy for its previous models. Here's a look at what GPT-4o produced.

GPT-5 on the other hand has more of an understanding of tone and nuances. It sounds a bit more like a person with emotions wrote it ... less dry.

Now we're in the midst of another GPT-5 demo that's centered around its ability to write code, spanning over 200 lines in just a few minutes of this demo. It actually created a site, with many visual elements and even audio ones, to help one learn French with a partner.

There is a lot of focus on coding with GPT-5, but we've also seen improvements in writing thus far. The teams at OpenAI have also been focused on further improving Voice and video functionality.

With GPT-5, voice mode is coming to all users, and in this demo, OpenAI is showing that you can be specific with how you want an answer. In this case, they demonstrated ChatGPT Voice's ability to respond with just one word, summarizing Pride and Prejudice as 'relationships.'

The biggest improvment, though, is that it sounds a lot more natural than even the current version in the app.

If you've been wanting to change the color of your ChatGPT interface, OpenAI is making that possible – to a degree – for paid users. Even more impressive, though, is the ability to customize the personality of GPT-5 a bit for research use cases.

We're now switching gears to ChatGPT's Memory function. Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers will be able to connect ChatGPT to a Google Account for calendar access. In fact, it can connect with Gmail and Google Calendar, allowing GPT-5 to pull in your schedule and get some more context.

It can even remind you to respond to an email that you've received, read, but haven't yet responded to. This will roll out first to Pro users next week, then Plus and Team at some point in the future.

OpenAI is also focused on improving safety and deception; in this case, GPT-5 will aim to maximize helpfulness within the allowed safety constraints. This will be in contrast to how previous models, like o3, might have refused on the grounds of safety before.

GPT-5 could answer the same prompt, by explaining why it can't offer help and point you towards a third-party or even a manual. The demo shown off by OpenAI here is a prompt asking for how to work with 'pyrogen.'

Sam Altman is now back onstage to start the discussion around ChatGPT-5 and how it handles the Health prompt. We now have two ChatGPT users on stage, including one, Carolina, who was diagnosed with three forms of cancer in one week.

After receiving an email confirming the diagnosis, this user took a screenshot and uploaded it to ChatGPT and got an understandable explanation. Altman says that Health questions are one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT as well. A takeaway from both of them is that ChatGPT can be used to help learn a bit more and 'regain some agency.'

Both of these users have used GPT-5 and note that it is a much faster, "almost a little alarmingly at first." Another key impression, though, is that GPT-5 is more of a thought partner than just delivering an answer based on the prompt. They also put the biopsy results back in, and GPT-5 asked follow-ups to get a bit more detail and deliver a more nuanced response.

Of course, ChatGPT or GPT-5 is not a medical doctor, and you should still see one for diagnosis and emergencies.

OpenAI is moving through this livestream pretty quickly. Now, Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI, is on stage, and the focus is shifting back to developers and coding. He says that GPT-5 is the best model at agentic coding tasks.

OpenAI's already covered a lot of ground, but let's run through what's new with GPT-5 quickly:

• Better reliability and more accurate answer with fewer hallucinations
• Improved writing skills for more precise results and the ability to switch based on context
• GPT-5 is the 'strongest coding model'
• It's OpenAI's best model for health-related questions
• GPT-5 will deliver safe completions rather than refusing a prompt
• It will ask follow-ups when needed to get more context for a better result
• The model can better adapt to context in prompts and can understand tone
• GPT-5 will handle all the heavy-lifting for deciding on the right model and will show its work
• It can connect with your Google account for access to Gmail and Google Calendar (Pro users get this first)
• Paid subscribers can customize the look of ChatGPT
• A more natural-sounding voice mode
• GPT-5 arrives for all subscribers, even the free tier, with varying levels of use

About an hour and 15 minutes later, and OpenAI's unveil of GPT-5 – dubbed the OpenAI Summer Update – has come to a close. Interestingly enough, OpenAI's chief scientist closed out the event, thanking the team, and his last line was "we'll get back to sailing."

While we weren't invited out to sea with them, we're constantly refreshing our ChatGPT pages as we await the GPT-5 rollout to hit our accounts. And whether you're on the free tier, Plus, or Pro, you can expect to see GPT-5 today and many of its new features.