OpenAI Launches Study Mode, AI Excel Wins 89% Of The Time

OpenAI has activated Study Mode in ChatGPT to walk users through problems step by step rather than handing over direct answers. The feature is live for Free, Plus, Pro, and Team accounts, with ChatGPT Edu access slated for the coming weeks.

Study Mode runs on custom system instructions created with teachers, scientists, and pedagogy experts to prompt active participation, manage cognitive load, and encourage self-reflection. It offers Socratic prompts, scaffolded explanations, personalized quizzes, and one-click toggling within any chat.

The rollout tackles educator concerns that ChatGPT enables shortcut learning by reframing it as a 24/7 tutor focused on mastery. OpenAI says it will use student feedback to refine the feature and later embed the behavior directly into its core models.

China turned the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai into a global stage, with Premier Li Qiang announcing a Shanghai-based organisation for AI co-operation and two new UN dialogue channels. The move positions Beijing as a multilateral foil to Washington’s recent “AI action plan” aimed at US dominance.

Over 800 companies showed robots, flying taxis and other AI products, attracting a wider international crowd that included Eric Schmidt, Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton. Exhibits leaned on open-source Chinese models from Alibaba and DeepSeek, a sharp shift from last year’s reliance on Meta’s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT.

Beijing’s open-source drive has fuelled a price war that slashes developer costs and enabled 60 robot makers to pack the expo with nearly identical prototypes. Safety specialists at WAIC cautioned that the same openness eases misuse and noted companies have little incentive to embed rigorous safeguards.

Shortcut launched Monday with an AI agent that handles multi-step Excel work like building financial models and swapping in SEC data, pitched with the tagline “Try Shortcut (before your boss does).” The browser-based tool mirrors an empty spreadsheet, adds a chatbot sidebar, and exports finished files back to Excel.

Founder Nico Christie says the agent beat first-year analysts from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and other firms in 89.1% of manager-scored tasks and outperformed ChatGPT Agent 90% of the time. Pricing starts at $40 per month for Shortcut Pro and climbs to $200 for Shortcut Max, with a seven-day free trial.

The release stokes fears that agentic AI will erase entry-level desk jobs, echoing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warning that half of such roles are vulnerable. Finance voices on X hail it as automating a “massive” slice of their workflow, even as early users complain about slow performance and formatting glitches.

From automated content creation to enhanced personalization to GEO, the marketing playbook is already being rewritten by AI. The winning marketing orgs will be the ones that change with it.

On August 15, join AI-driven marketing expert and Hubspot VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, as he discusses metric-accelerating strategies for marketing leaders.

He’ll answer questions like: How do marketing priorities change with the emergence of AI? Is the impact of AI going to cause marketing teams to shrink or expand? What will marketing look like 5 years from now?

Tata Consultancy Services will cut about 12,000 roles, or 2% of its global workforce, over the current fiscal year. CEO K Krithivasan calls the move “a hard but necessary reckoning” and says it will be rolled out gradually through FY26.

Krithivasan insists the reduction is driven by skill mismatches rather than productivity gains from AI, and is not tied to any specific geography or business line. Yet TCS’s official statement links the downsizing to a broader push to deploy AI at scale and will focus cuts on senior and mid-level employees.

The announcement highlights mounting pressure on India’s people-heavy IT services model as clients demand steep price cuts and automation rises, according to HFS Research. HCLTech has already flagged similar automation-related reductions, showing big providers are trimming experienced staff while retraining junior talent.

The Las Vegas Sphere will premiere “The Wizard of Oz” on August 28 as its first classic movie screening. A 2,000-person team has rebuilt the film with AI to fit the venue’s 160,000-square-foot wraparound LED screen.

AI tools upscale grainy close-ups into richly detailed images and use outpainting to reveal scenery that was never filmed. Some scenes even generate new on-screen performances from the original actors while preserving the narrative, according to Sphere executives.

By generating unseen scenery and performances, the project moves beyond traditional restoration into active content creation. The approach blurs the line between preserving a classic and fabricating new material, a boundary Sphere’s CEO openly acknowledges.

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