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A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Tuesday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Tuesday, August 12 (game #1296).
Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,100 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.
Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
Quordle today (game #1297) - hint #1 - VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 5*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Quordle today (game #1297) - hint #2 - repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.
Quordle today (game #1297) - hint #3 - uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.
Quordle today (game #1297) - hint #4 - starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.
If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:
Quordle today (game #1297) - hint #5 - starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?• C
• H
• E
• A
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
Quordle today (game #1297) - the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle, game #1297, are…
- CACTI
- HOMER
- ALBUM
Another five-vowel day, but thanks to several repeated Quordle words – CACTI and EMAIL – much easier than yesterday.
ALBUM was my best guess today – one of those brilliant times when you see the word in your mind's eye and just know it’s right. Logically I know this comes from playing all the Quordle games every day, but I like to pretend it’s brain magic.
Daily Sequence today (game #1297) - the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1297, are…
- SWORN
- ODDER
- SCENT
- WIELD
- Quordle #1296, Tuesday, 12 August: SPOOL, TITLE, JAUNT, OVINE
- Quordle #1295, Monday, 11 August: ADULT, BROOM, PURER, CRUEL
- Quordle #1294, Sunday, 10 August: SCRUM, PIPER, TROLL, SPORE
- Quordle #1293, Saturday, 9 August: NOOSE, INLET, ELEGY, VIRUS
- Quordle #1292, Friday, 8 August: KNEEL, KINKY, RALPH, BOOZY
- Quordle #1291, Thursday, 7 August: PLUNK, PROXY, CURVY, PEARL
- Quordle #1290, Wednesday, 6 August: RISKY, APART, FAUNA, HANDY
- Quordle #1289, Tuesday, 5 August: ROAST, SLICK, AUDIT, BILLY
- Quordle #1288, Monday, 4 August: MACAW, SINCE, COLON, CHIRP
- Quordle #1287, Sunday, 3 August: MOTIF, LEERY, LOFTY, BURST
- Quordle #1286, Saturday, 2 August: WARTY, PUPAL, CLEAR, SLICE
- Quordle #1285, Friday, 1 August: ACTOR, MEALY, WIDTH, ADOBE
- Quordle #1284, Thursday, 31 July: STYLE, VALET, AGONY, ALLOY
- Quordle #1283, Wednesday, 30 July: DEBAR, ADMIN, FOLIO, USAGE
- Quordle #1282, Tuesday, 29 July: BATCH, TOPIC, MURKY, BUNCH
- Quordle #1281, Monday, 28 July: CANDY, TRYST, SHIRT, FORGO
- Quordle #1280, Sunday, 27 July: TRAWL, BALER, PIANO, MINCE
- Quordle #1279, Saturday, 26 July: MUDDY, SAINT, KINKY, POLAR
- Quordle #1278, Friday, 25 July: BONUS, RESIN, CEDAR, MADAM
Goosebumps has been canceled after two seasons at Disney+ and I'm heartbroken at the sudden loss of the hit horror series.
The R.L. Stine adaptation received rave reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 75% at the time of writing. It was one of the best Disney+ shows, so it's sudden disappearance may come as a shock to fans.
However, there's a chance we could see Goosebumps revived elsewhere as reports have suggested that the supernatural horror series could find a different streaming home. According to Variety, "an individual with knowledge of the situation, series producer Sony Pictures Television plans to shop the show to other outlets and explore different creative directions for the IP".
While that isn't a lot to go off right now, it does give us an indication that Goosebumps isn't completely dead in the water, and that producers are keen to see a fresh take on the series.
Where could Goosebumps end up next?(Image credit: Disney+)Unfortunately I don't have clairvoyance like some characters you may see in Goosebumps, but there are certainly streaming services that have favored horror content recently that could make them a great contender for the series.
HBO Max consistently picks up A24 horror movies and is no stranger to the darker side of storytelling, so could we see a Goosebumps revival coming to the best HBO Max shows? I do think that HBO Max would be a great place for Goosebumps, but that's not the only service that caught my eye when considering where it might go next.
Shudder is the leading horror streaming service with plenty of great originals. Most recently, they adapted the found footage horror movie series Creep into a series, so it would be interesting to see if they had a hand in re-developing Goosebumps.
I'd be happy with either of these options. Given the fact we've seen such a revival for good quality horror on the best streaming services, I'm praying that Goosebumps gets picked up somewhere and doesn't come to an abrupt end.
Right now this is all speculation but with a huge IP like Goosebumps, I'm sure many streamers would jump at the chance to have it in their library.
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Industry leaders have been blunt. Lawyers need to wake up to the reality of AI or risk becoming professionally obsolete. That warning is a bit dramatic because AI isn’t replacing legal professionals wholesale, but it is reshaping the value they bring and how fast they can deliver it. The lawyers making the biggest impact today are the ones who understand how to guide artificial intelligence with precision and control. Think walking by foot versus driving a vehicle – a new skill set and a new vocabulary.
I’ve been out of Big Law for over two years, which is long enough to notice where my own skills have frayed and where they’ve evolved. When an AI startup asked me to create their privacy compliance suite, I approached it with the kind of wariness lawyers are trained for. I was handed a ChatGPT-generated privacy policy filled with undefined terms and placeholders referencing documents that didn’t exist. In other words, a mess, but it was also a gold mine.
I uploaded the document into ChatGPT, and the interface shifted into something closer to collaborative drafting. Instead of starting from scratch, I prompted the model to revise line by line and adjusted how it framed risk. I fed in examples of clauses from comparable companies and asked for output tailored to those formats. When a provision was highly bespoke to the client’s unique offering, I stepped in to do the deeper legal work – but for the bulk of it, AI handled the drafting and research in hours.
Compare that to a friend who spent nearly $7,000 building out a similar privacy suite through traditional legal channels. Most of that cost came down to the slow pace of drafting and unclear requirements. I reached the outcome faster and with tighter alignment to the client’s product.
AI has changed the legal skills stackThere’s a popular tendency to describe AI as disruptive. That’s accurate, but incomplete. Just as the arrival of Excel didn’t eliminate accountants, AI won’t eliminate lawyers. It is, however, recalibrating what legal professionals need to know to remain effective.
In high-performing legal teams, we’re seeing the rise of a distinct AI-legal skill set that wasn’t part of traditional training. These aren’t technical skills in the traditional sense – you don’t need to know how to build a large language model (LLM), but you do need to know how to frame legal questions in a way that AI can respond to.
You need to know when to trust AI-generated output, and when to override it. You need to be able to translate legal logic into structured prompts that guide a model toward the right outcome. You need to evaluate tools for more than convenience, focusing instead on how they perform under legal scrutiny.
What’s more, these skills are starting to show up in hiring decisions. In-house teams want lawyers who can iterate faster. Clients are asking their outside counsel how they’re using AI to create value. Legal departments are rethinking workflows, using AI for early-stage drafting and research. Ultimately, AI is becoming a structural layer in how legal teams deliver insight.
Cross-examining algorithmsTo be clear, talking to AI is more than typing into a chatbot. In legal practice, you’re using your own judgment to steer the model through ambiguity and shape its output into something that meets legal and commercial standards. That might involve asking a model to generate clause variations along a risk spectrum.
It might mean taking the first pass of a diligence memo and filtering it through three different lenses – legal risk, business impact, and jurisdictional nuance. Lawyers are used to cross-examining people, now we need to get comfortable cross-examining algorithms.
None of this replaces legal training, but it does challenge lawyers to apply that training differently. To be a great lawyer today, you still need to apply sharp judgment but with quickness and clarity.
The next generationThese skills are being learned in real time. What’s striking is that lawyers aren’t approaching this like a technology problem, but instead treating it as a professional evolution. They want to understand how to use AI, and how to supervise it. They’re learning how to frame legal tasks for AI systems with enough specificity to avoid hallucinations and enough flexibility to accommodate ambiguity.
There’s a cultural shift underway, too. Lawyers who once defaulted to AI hesitancy are starting to move toward hands-on experimentation. They’re building muscle memory around prompt design, testing outputs across multiple models and generally asking better questions. In doing so, they’re creating a new baseline for what legal excellence looks like.
AI hasn’t erased the need for legal judgment. If anything, it’s made that judgment more visible – because nothing AI produces carries weight until a lawyer decides how it holds up in the real world – at least for now.
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Cybersecurity burnout, advanced AI threats, and rising geopolitical tensions across the globe are heavily impacting businesses and their cybersecurity strategies. These challenges call for a rethink in cybersecurity strategies and place a greater importance on cyber preparedness and incident response.
Exhausted cybersecurity workforce leads to gaps in defenseBusinesses are underestimating how stressed- and burned-out cybersecurity professionals truly are, and the effect is deteriorating their cyber defenses. The world already faces an acute shortage of cybersecurity professionals, and an overstretched workforce is only exacerbating the weakening of our defenses.
Gartner’s survey in 2023 analyzed that 62% of cybersecurity professionals experienced burnout at least once, and 44% did multiple times. The analyst firm predicted that half of cybersecurity leaders would change their job by 2025 due to stress, and 25% would “pursue different roles entirely.”
This burnout can impact the most critical stages of cybersecurity. Despite millions being spent on manual alert triages - the United States alone spends $3.3 billion per year, according to a 2023 survey by VectraAI - security operations center analysts reported suffering alert fatigue.
On a daily basis, they are spending nearly three hours triaging thousands of alerts manually, and 67% of those alerts were not resolved. This is where automated threat detection and the use of AI can reduce some of the cybersecurity world’s burden. Unfortunately, threat actors are adopting such techniques at a faster rate than defenders.
AI for goodToday’s attackers are benefiting from emerging technologies, like AI, to enhance their efficiency in malicious ventures. Research by Radware found that generative AI can be used by threat actors to shorten the time to find vulnerabilities by as much as 90%. When creating phishing messages for training exercises, IBM also found that through the use of ChatGPT, they could reduce 16 hours of manual labor to just five minutes.
The speed and ease of generative AI have also lowered the barrier to entry for those who lack an IT background. In one case, police in Japan had arrested a man in his 20s, who had created ransomware in less than six hours - with no prior IT or cybersecurity knowledge. In another case, a 17-year-old Japanese high schooler had successfully created a ChatGPT tool that collects credit card information and used it to go shopping.
Cybersecurity defenders have no choice but to take advantage of AI to keep pace. Automating some of our tasks and workloads will reduce our burden. At NTT, we have been using machine learning capabilities over the last decade or so to analyze behavioral patterns and use predictive analytics to detect threats, and we have recently started to use generative AI too. For example, NTT Security proved that GPT-4 can identify if a website is legitimate or phishing at over 98% accuracy ratio, and even GPT 3.5 can at 86.7%.
Geopolitical tensions between the Taiwan StraitGeopolitical tensions are fueling a rise in state-sponsored cyber operations. In fact, a precursor to a potential Taiwan crisis has already taken place in cyberspace.
The Chinese state-sponsored actor group, Volt Typhoon, is believed to pre-position itself on the networks of critical infrastructure companies in the communication, energy, transportation, and water sectors to launch disruptive cyberattacks as a consequence of conflict with the United States. However, Volt Typhoon’s targets are not necessarily limited to U.S.-based critical infrastructure companies.
Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, reported in August 2024, with moderate confidence, that traits of threat actor, Volt Typhoon, had breached four U.S victims and one non-U.S. organization within the internet service provider, managed service provider and IT sectors last year. A Bloomberg article in November 2024 also suggested that Singtel had been breached as part of a “test run” for attacks against U.S. telecommunication companies.
While there has been no report that Volt Typhoon has breached any critical infrastructure companies in Japan or Taiwan, Cisco Talos published a blog in March 2025 that a Chinese hacker group, UAT-5918, had been attacking Taiwanese telecommunications, healthcare, information technology, and other critical infrastructure sectors, and their tactics and targets are similar to Volt Typhoon’s.
Given the geographical proximity of Japan to Taiwan and the alliance between Japan and the United States, both countries will have a role to play in a crisis involving Taiwan. Okinawa has bases of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and U.S. military. Retired General Paul Nakasone, former Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, and former Director, National Security Agency, alerted during an interview by Ryu-Q Asahi Broadcasting, an Okinawan TV station, in March 2025 that Volt Typhoon might have been penetrated into “places in Okinawa,” and “They would be able to do such things as perhaps turning off power in Naha or being able to impact the economy of Okinawa.”
In fact, the U.S. military consumes nine percent of the electric power in Okinawa. Thus, critical infrastructure companies in the United States and Japan need to enhance their cyber defenses and proactively hunt threats to minimize potential damages. This is crucial for the two allies to stay operational and resilient economically and militarily in crisis.
Japanese Active Cyber DefenseBusinesses and regulators need to work together to share cyber threat intelligence and the painful lessons they have learned to close defensive gaps, especially when their country face more cyber challenges in heightened geopolitical tensions.
Since regulators accumulate incident reports from businesses, it would be beneficial for businesses to receive actionable threat intelligence and threat mitigation methods from the government in a classified or sanitized way. It would also help the industry to proactively conduct threat hunting before they are hit by a cyberattack.
That is why the Japanese Diet (parliament) passed the Active Cyber Defense legislation in May 2025. This law aims to minimize potential damage caused by cyberattacks against the Japanese government or critical infrastructure that can threaten Japan’s national defense, even when that cyberattack does not constitute part of an armed attack.
The legislation has three pillars: public-private partnerships, government usage of telecommunication data, and neutralization of such cyberattacks by the police and Self-Defense Forces, even before they are launched. The legislation was passed the same day that another act was enacted to expand the coverage of security clearance to industry personnel.
A combination of the two acts, would allow the government to disseminate even classified cyber threat intelligence to the industry to warn and advise them about threats and actions to take.
Of course, it will take some time for Japan to operationalize active cyber defense and expanded security clearance. Still, it is highly beneficial for Japan as well as its allies and partners, because threat actors tend to exploit the weakest link in cyber defenses.
Since the damage of cyberattacks go beyond national borders, a breach in Japan can lead to the leakage of sensitive information on the United Kingdom and suspended Japanese business operations can disrupt supply chains in Australia and the United States.
Furthermore, these two types of capabilities will require Japan to improve its intelligence capacity. Without visibility, it is impossible to manage or minimize cyber threats. The expanded security clearance in Japan would also enable like-minded countries to share more cyber threat intelligence, leading to more robust defenses.
C-Suite preparedness: a trifecta solutionAs adversaries are flexibly taking advantage of artificial intelligence, generative AI, and deepfake to launch cyberattacks in scale and at lower costs, defenders must use emerging technologies. However, it is still people that need to make the final decision on what to invest in and what to prioritize.
According to the 2025 EY Global Cybersecurity Leadership Insights Study, only 13% of CISOs answered that “they were consulted early when urgent strategic decisions were being made,” although “the cybersecurity function typically accounts for 11% to 20% of the value produced by enterprise-wide initiatives it is involved in.”
Thus, it is crucial for the C-suite to start inviting the CISO to board and executive meetings to incorporate cybersecurity perspectives in strategic decision-making. Moreover, the leadership needs to champion the cybersecurity team with sufficient resources to allow them to engage with and respond to threats flexibly and quickly.
Finally, gratitude and recognition from the leadership are also important. It is rewarding and that feeling further motivates defenders to fight adversary and protect corporate brand, employees, and customers.
Empower cybersecurity professionals through trainingThere are two ways to train the next generation of defenders: train existing workforce who are not necessarily technologically savvy but who are interested in cybersecurity and educate young people who are currently in school.
For example, NTT Group launched an internal bug bounty program in 2023, and non-cybersecurity professionals have been contributing to improving internal cybersecurity by reporting bugs through it. This showcases that recognition and incentive can motivate people to be part of a cybersecurity team and enable better security.
Furthermore, leadership needs to provide flexibility and educational opportunities to grow for cybersecurity professionals. If those professionals live in rural areas, there are fewer chances for them to network with local professionals. It is important to fund them and let them participate in cybersecurity events to learn from each other. Equally, it is crucial for cybersecurity professionals to engage with young students from elementary schools to graduate schools, to share their first-hand expertise and inspire them.
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- FedRAMP 20x has drastically cut the time it takes for the US Government to approve a service
- Automation and artificial intelligence can take some of the stress off manual processes
- The GSA is also making moves to centralize procurement to get better deals
The US Government's Federal Risk and Authorisation Management Programme (FedRAMP) has already approved 114 cloud computing services in fiscal 2025, more than double the total number of approved services the previous year.
FedRAMP 20x is to be thanked for the boost – a Biden-era initiative that lives on under the Trump administration, that's aimed at modernizing cloud authorization by cutting down the amount of documentation needed, enabling automation and streamlining decision-making.
In 2024, an Office of Management and Budget memo detailed how a " a standardized, reusable approach to security assessments and authorizations for cloud computing products and services" could speed the existing process up.
FedRAMP is approving more cloud contracts than everThe new process requires machine-readable security indicators that can be analyzed by artificial intelligence even before they reach the human review stage. Currently in pilot phase, phase one will focus on low-impact and lower-security services with phase two testing moderate-impact deals.
Consequentially, the US Government has been able to reduce the time it takes to approve a deal from over a year to around five weeks, marking a colossal improvement to the dated system.
"The program is setting a new standard for federal IT modernization and reaffirming GSA’s commitment to delivering smarter, more secure services for Americans," GSA Acting Administrator Michael Rigas explained in a GSA announcement.
FedRAMP Director Pete Waterman added: "FedRAMP 20x has allowed us to rethink the entire authorization model and prove that security and speed can coexist in the federal space."
Trump has also pushed for consolidated IT procurement under the General Services Administration (GSA) while simultaneously looking to acquire government-wide contracts rather than individual department contracts, ultimately leading to huge savings thanks to improved purchasing power.
As a result, we've already seen cloud companies and other tech firms offer weighty discounts to the White House - including AWS, which is giving the US government $1billion credit to keep running its cloud services.
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The recent surge in cyberattacks on major UK retailers such as the Co-op and Marks & Spencer has brought home the harsh reality of today’s threat landscape. These breaches haven’t just exposed sensitive data—they’ve caused millions in lost revenue, long-term operational disruption, and reputational damage. For cybercriminals, attacks of this scale serve as proof of the damage they can inflict—and a blueprint for future campaigns.
Cyber threats are no longer rare occurrences. They are relentless, increasingly automated, and difficult to detect. Attackers are exploiting misconfigurations, weak credentials, and unseen trust relationships to move laterally and escalate access—rendering traditional defenses like firewalls and periodic scans no longer sufficient.
Thanks to advances in AI, launching a sophisticated cyberattack now costs next to nothing. Today’s adversaries—from nation-state actors to cybercrime groups—are deploying AI-powered agents capable of disrupting not only individual organizations, but entire sectors. The UK retail incidents may have made headlines, but similar techniques are being used across industries—quietly eroding systems over time.
If there’s one takeaway from these breaches, it’s that they are a wake-up call—an opportunity to separate what’s assumed to be secure from what’s proven to be. Marks & Spencer’s decision to accelerate their tech transformation is the right move, but only if it’s grounded in security that’s continuously validated, not just promised.
Why passive defense is no longer enoughTraditional cybersecurity measures—like firewalls, antivirus software, and compliance checklists—were built for a slower, more predictable threat landscape. They aim to block known threats and tick regulatory boxes, often relying on periodic assessments and static defenses.
But today’s threat actors move faster than these systems can react. They use automation and AI to adapt, persist, and exploit weaknesses in real time. In a world where threats evolve daily, a reactive approach simply can’t keep pace. Organizations need strategies that assume compromise, move proactively, and adapt with the same agility as the attackers they face.
A radically faster threat landscapeWe’re in a new reality. With generative AI, developing weaponized exploits no longer requires deep technical expertise—just the right prompt. What once took weeks of work by highly skilled attackers can now be achieved in minutes by anyone with access to the right tools. This levelling of the playing field has dramatically accelerated the pace of cyberattacks.
The moment a vulnerability (CVE) becomes public, attackers begin exploiting it almost instantly. There’s no longer a buffer for defenders to respond. The asymmetric advantage we thought we had—people, process, tools—is eroding because the adversary has something more powerful: tempo. The result is a cyber environment defined by speed, where hesitation or outdated defenses can be costly.
Offence is the best defenseAs cyber threats evolve in both speed and sophistication, traditional security measures—while still necessary—are no longer enough on their own. Tools and audits tend to focus on ticking regulatory boxes rather than addressing the weaknesses most likely to be exploited in real-world attacks.
To stay ahead, organizations need to go beyond passive defense and adopt a more adversarial perspective. Offensive security does just that—actively probing systems for weaknesses using techniques such as penetration testing, red teaming, and social engineering simulations. These controlled exercises expose gaps that conventional tools often overlook, giving teams the chance to fix them before malicious actors do.
This shift in approach is becoming crucial. As attackers grow faster and more opportunistic, defenders must become equally agile. Offensive security replaces assumptions with evidence—offering a clear, action-oriented view of where security holds firm and where urgent improvements are needed.
What UK businesses must do nowMany organizations are responding to rising cyber threats by increasing patching cycles and ramping up alert monitoring. But volume alone doesn’t equal security. The real challenge is not visibility, but prioritization. Rather than trying to fix everything at once, security teams must understand where cyber criminals are most likely to strike—and act accordingly.
This is where adversarial testing plays a vital role. Simulating the techniques used by real attackers helps uncover the vulnerabilities that matter most. It moves businesses away from reactive models and towards a more strategic, evidence-based approach to defense.
For UK companies—especially in exposed sectors like retail—key steps include:
- Implementing continuous security testing to keep pace with constant change
- Reviewing and updating incident response strategies to reflect evolving threats
- Investing in threat intelligence and red-teaming to sharpen detection and resilience
Speed isn’t the enemy—assuming you're secure is. Modernizing in a post-breach window can make you stronger, but only if every new system, integration, or control is tested like an attacker would.
Too many organizations skip this step. They make the mistake of equating 'new' with 'secure' and implement changes without knowing what risks they’re introducing. We’re not in the age of zero-days anymore.
We’re in the age of zero hours. The organizations that stay secure won’t be those that react the loudest—but those that challenge assumptions and prove their defenses work, day in and day out.
The role of leadershipCybersecurity can no longer be treated as a siloed IT concern — it’s a critical business issue that belongs on the board agenda. From operational continuity to customer trust, cyber resilience underpins every facet of modern enterprise. That’s why leadership alignment is essential. Security decisions must be cross-functional, embedded into digital transformation efforts and tied directly to business risk and reputation.
Security-by-design isn’t a checkbox—it’s a mindset. And the only way to know you’re getting it right is to validate like the adversary. That’s how you build real resilience, restore trust, and come back stronger.
From assumptions to assuranceIn a threat landscape defined by speed and unpredictability, being proactive isn’t optional — it’s essential. UK retailers and businesses across sectors must move beyond reactive measures and start thinking like attackers. The organizations that will lead in security aren’t those with the most tools, but those with the discipline to test, question, and validate every assumption — before it’s too late.
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- ChatGPT-5 scores a low 1.4% on the Hallucination Leaderboard
- This puts it ahead of ChatGPT-4 which scores 1.8% and GPT-4o, which scores 1.49%
- Grok 4 is much higher at 4.8%, with Gemini-2.5 Pro at 2.6%
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, launched ChatGPT-5 on Thursday as the most “powerful, smart, fastest, reliable and robust version of ChatGPT that we’ve ever shipped”, and in the presentation, OpenAI staff also emphasized that ChatGPT-5 would “mitigate hallucinations”.
While hallucination rates are dropping amongst almost all LLMs, it's still surprisingly common, and one of the main reasons that we can't trust AI to perform a task without human supervision.
Vectara, the RAG-as-a-Service and AI agent platform that operates the industry’s top hallucination leaderboard for foundation and reasoning models, has put OpenAI’s claims to the test and found that GPT-5 does indeed rank lower for hallucinations than GPT-4, but is only just a little bit lower than GPT-4o (just 0.09% lower, in fact).
According to Vectara, GPT-5 has a grounded hallucination rate of 1.4%, compared to 1.8% for GPT-4, and 1.69% for GPT-4 turbo and 4o mini, with 1.49% for GPT-4o.
Spicy GrokInterestingly, the ChatGPT-5 hallucination rate came out slightly higher than the ChatGPT-4.5 Preview mode, which scored 1.2%, but it also scored a lot higher than OpenAI’s o3-mini High Reasoning model, which was the best-performing GPT model, with a grounded hallucination rate of 0.795%.
The results of the Vectra tests can be viewed on the Hughes Hallucination Evaluation Model (HHEM) Leaderboard hosted on Hugging Face, which states that, “For an LLM, its hallucination rate is defined as the ratio of summaries that hallucinate to the total number of summaries it generates”.
ChatGPT-5 still hallucinates a lot less than its competition, though, with Gemini-2.5-pro coming in at 2.6% and Grok-4 being much higher at 4.8%.
XAI, the makers of Grok recently received a lot of criticism for its new “Spicy” mode in Grok Imagine, an AI video generator that seems happy to create deepfake topless videos of celebrities like Taylor Swift, even if nudity had not been requested and the system is supposed to include filters and moderation to prevent actual nudity or anything sexual.
Grok Imagine is accused of deliberatley creating sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift. (Image credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)'I lost my best friend'OpenAI faced an almost immediate backlash when it removed ChatGPT 4, and all its variations like GPT-4o and 4o-mini, from its Plus accounts with the introduction of ChatGPT-5. Many users were incensed that OpenAI gave no warning that the older models were being removed, with some Reddit users saying they had “lost their only friend overnight”.
It now seems like ChatGPT-5 has replaced one of the most reliable versions of ChatGPT (version 4.5), from the hallucination perspective, as well.
Sam Altman quickly posted on X, “We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways”, and promised to bring back ChatGPT-4o for Plus users for a limited time", saying, "we will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for”.
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