Today in AI | 72% US teens have AI companions | ChatGPT handles billions of prompts | San Jose sees AI development

The world of Artificial Intelligence has only begun to affect human lives. In times like these, staying up-to-date with the AI world is of utmost importance. Storyboard18 brings you the top AI news of the day.

72% of U.S. teens have tried AI companions: study reveals

A new report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization dedicated to kids and family wellbeing, has revealed that 72% of U.S. teenagers aged 13 to 17 have used AI companions at least once. These AI “companions” refer not to homework helpers or voice assistants like Siri, but to chatbots designed for personal and emotional interaction.

This category includes platforms like Character.AI and Replika, where users can engage with custom digital personas, as well as more general AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, which users sometimes turn to for deeper or more personal conversations.

The study underscores the rising curiosity and comfort teens have with AI. It found that 52% of those surveyed are regular users, with 13% engaging daily and 21% chatting with AI a few times a week.

The findings highlight how rapidly AI companions are becoming part of young people’s digital social lives—reflecting a shift in how teens seek connection, explore identity, and navigate emotions in an increasingly AI-integrated world.

ChatGPT now handles 2.5 billion prompts a day, doubling usage in just 8 months

ChatGPT is now processing 2.5 billion prompts every day from users around the globe, the company revealed to Axios. Of these, approximately 330 million originate from users in the United States - highlighting the chatbot's deep penetration into every digital habits.

Also Read: San Jose Mayor bets on ChatGPT, pushes AI adoption with speeches and surveillance

The numbers underscore the meteoric rise of generative AI as a mainstream utility. Just eight months ago, in December, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that ChatGPT was handling over 1 billion queries daily. The latest figures suggest that usage has more than doubled in less than a year, a rare pace on growth even in the fast-moving tech world.

To put that in context, Google - long the dominant player in the search landscape - receives roughly 13.7 to 16.4 billion searches daily, according to independent estimates from Neil Patel's NP Digital and marketing firms SparkToro and Datos.

Read More: ChatGPT surpasses 900 million downloads, widens lead over rival AI chatbots

San Jose Mayor bets on ChatGPT, pushes AI adoption with speeches and surveillance

In a bold move to modernise public services, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is championing the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools in day-to-day city governance. His message is clear: embrace AI not to replace public workers, but to eliminate drudge work and elevate the quality of services for the city’s 1 million residents.

The city has already invested $35,000 on 89 ChatGPT licenses and is in the process of training 1,000 employees — nearly 15% of its workforce — to leverage AI in their roles. The applications are wide-ranging - drafting speeches and budget documents, responding to resident complaints, optimising bus routes, assisting with criminal investigations using vehicle-tracking cameras, reported AP news.

Mayor Mahan is leading by example. He openly admits to using ChatGPT for speechwriting and budget prep. His philosophy: "Be transparent, try new things, and fix what doesn’t work. You still need a human being in the loop,” Mahan cautions. “You can’t just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output."

Dell faces employee burnout, morale crisis amid AI layoffs

As Dell Technologies fast-tracks its artificial intelligence transformation, it is facing a steep internal crisis: a demoralised workforce grappling with burnout, job insecurity, and AI fatigue.

According to Dell’s latest internal "Tell Dell" survey, the company’s Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) — a key indicator of employee satisfaction — has nosedived from 63 in 2023 to just 32 this year. This dramatic 49% drop in employee sentiment paints a worrying picture for the tech giant’s internal health.

The dip in morale is attributed to two major drivers - extensive layoffs of Dell, that has cut around 25,000 jobs over the past two years, raising alarm among remaining employees about job security and increasing workloads and aggressive AI adoption: Contrary to expectations, Dell’s pivot to AI hasn’t lightened workloads. Instead, employees report that AI-related tasks are adding complexity and pressure, contributing to what many are calling "AI workload burnout."

Adding to the strain is a stringent return-to-office (RTO) policy, which employees say highlights a disconnect between leadership decisions and on-the-ground challenges.

Google and OpenAI’s AI models win gold at international math olympiad

In a significant milestone for artificial intelligence, Google (Alphabet) and OpenAI have announced that their AI models have achieved gold medal status at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)—one of the most prestigious math competitions for high-school students worldwide.

This marks the first time AI models have crossed the gold-medal threshold in the contest’s history. Impressively, both companies' systems managed to solve five out of six complex problems, a feat that highlights a dramatic leap in the mathematical reasoning abilities of AI.

What sets this achievement apart is that the AI systems used general-purpose reasoning models—those capable of understanding and working with mathematical problems expressed in natural language. This is a departure from previous AI approaches that relied more on symbolic computation or brute-force tactics.

Experts are calling this a potential inflection point for AI in advanced mathematics. Junehyuk Jung, a mathematics professor at Brown University and visiting researcher with Google DeepMind, noted that this development indicates AI may be less than a year away from helping mathematicians tackle unsolved, cutting-edge problems in the field.

The result intensifies the race to create artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems that can understand and reason like humans across a wide variety of tasks, including math at the highest level.

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