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As the generative AI field heats up, consumer-facing chatbots are fielding questions about business strategy, designing study guides for math class, offering advice on salary negotiation and even writing wedding vows. And things are just getting started. 

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Bing and Anthropic’s Claude are a few of today’s leading chatbots, but over the coming year, we’ll likely see more emerge: In the venture capital space, generative AI-related deals totaled $1.69 billion worldwide in Q1 of this year, a 130% spike from last quarter’s $0.73 billion – with another $10.68 billion worth of deals being announced but not yet completed in Q1, according to Pitchbook data. 

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Two months after ChatGPT’s launch, it surpassed 100 million monthly active users, breaking records for the fastest-growing consumer application in history: “a phenomenal uptake – we’ve frankly never seen anything like it, and interest has grown ever since,” Brian Burke, a research VP at Gartner, told CNBC. “From its release on November 30 to now, our inquiry volume has shot up like a hockey stick; every client wants to know about generative AI and ChatGPT.” 

These types of chatbots are built atop large language models, or LLMs, a machine learning tool that uses large amounts of internet data to recognize patterns and generate human-sounding language. If you’re a beginner, many of the sources we spoke with agreed that the best way to start using a chatbot is to dive in and try things out. 

“People spend too much time trying to find the perfect prompt – 80% of it is just using it interactively,” Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies the effects of AI on work and education, told CNBC. 

Here are some tips from the pros:

Keep data privacy in mind. 

When you use a chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard, the information you put in – what you type, what you receive in response, and the changes you ask for – may be used to train future models. OpenAI says as much in its terms. Although some companies offer ways to opt out – OpenAI allows this under “data controls” in ChatGPT settings – it’s still best to refrain from sharing sensitive or private data in chatbot conversations, especially while companies are still finessing their privacy measures. For instance, a ChatGPT bug in March briefly allowed users to see parts of each others’ conversation histories. 

“If you wouldn’t post it on Facebook, don’t put it into ChatGPT,” Burke said. “Think about what you put into ChatGPT as being public information.”

Offer up context. 

For the best possible return on your time, give the chatbot context about how it should act in this scenario, and who it’s serving with this information. For example, you can write out the persona you want the chatbot to assume in this scenario: “You are a [marketer, teacher, philosopher, etc.].” You can also add context like: “I am a [client, student, beginner, etc.].” This could save time by directly telling the chatbot which kind of role it should assume, and which “lens” to pass the information through in a way that’s helpful to you. 

For instance, if you’re a creative consultant looking for a chatbot to help you with analysis on company logos, you could type out something like, “Act as if you are a graphic designer who studies logo design for companies. I am a client who owns a company and is looking to learn about which logos work best and why. Generate an analysis on the ‘best’ company logos for publicly listed companies and why they’re seen as good choices.” 

“If you ask Bard to write an inspirational speech, Bard’s response may be a bit more generic – but if you ask Bard to write a speech in a specific style, tone or format, you’ll likely get a much better response,” Sissie Hsiao, a VP at Google, told CNBC.

Make the chatbot do all the work.

Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to ask the chatbot itself for advice – whether you’re asking about what’s possible as a user, or about the best way to word your prompt.

“Ask it the simple question, what kinds of things can you do? And it’ll give you a list of things that would actually surprise most people,” Burke said. 

You can also game the system by asking something like, “What’s the best way to ask you for help writing a shopping list?” or even assigning the chatbot a prompt-writing job, like, “Your job is to generate the best and most efficient prompts for ChatGPT. Generate a list of the best prompts to ask ChatGPT for healthy one-pot dinner recipes.” 

Ask for help with brainstorming. 

Whether you’re looking for vacation destinations, date ideas, poetry prompts or content strategies for going viral on social media, many people are using chatbots as a jumping-off point for brainstorming sessions. 

“The biggest thing…that I find them to be helpful for is inspiring me as the user and helping me learn things that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of on my own,” Josh Albrecht, CTO of Generally Intelligent, an AI research startup, told CNBC. “Maybe that’s why they’re called generative AI – they’re really helpful at the generative part, the brainstorming.” 

Create a crash course. 

Let’s say you’re trying to learn about geometry, and you consider yourself a beginner. You could kick off your studies by asking a chatbot something like, “Explain the basics of geometry as if I’m a beginner,” or, “Explain the Pythagorean Theorem as if I’m a five-year-old.” 

If you’re looking for something more expansive, you can ask a chatbot to create a “crash course” for you, specifying how much time you’ve got (three days, a week, a month) or how many hours you want to spend learning the new skill. You can write something like, “I’m a beginner who wants to learn how to skateboard. Create a two-week plan for how I can learn to skateboard and do a kickflip.” 

To expand your learning plan beyond the chatbot, you can also ask for a list of the most important books about a topic, some of the most influential people in the field and any other resources that could help you advance your skill set. 

Don’t be afraid to give notes and ask for changes. 

“The worst thing you could do if you’re actually trying to use the output of ChatGPT is [to] just ask it one thing once and then walk away,” Mollick said. “You’re going to get very generic output. You have to interact with it.”

Sometimes you won’t choose the perfect prompt, or the chatbot won’t generate the output you were looking for – and that’s okay. You can still make tweaks to make the information more helpful, like asking follow-up questions like, “Can you make it sound less generic?” or “Can you make the first paragraph more interesting?” or even restating your original ask in a different way. 

Take everything with many grains of salt.

Chatbots have a documented tendency to fabricate information, especially when their training data doesn’t fully cover an area you’re asking about, so it’s important to take everything with a grain of salt. Say you’re asking for a biography of Albert Einstein: A chatbot might tell you the famous scientist wrote a book called “How to Be Smart,” when, unfortunately, he never did. Also, since large language models are trained upon large swaths of the internet, they’re best at pattern recognition, meaning they can generate biased outputs or misinformation based on their training data. 

“Where there’s less information, it just makes stuff up,” Burke said, adding, “These hallucinations are extraordinarily convincing…You can’t trust these models to give you accurate information all the time.”

Experiment and try different approaches.

Whether you’re asking for a chatbot to generate a list of action items from a meeting transcript or translate something from English to Tagalog, there are an untold range of use cases for generative AI. So when you’re using a chatbot, it’s worth thinking about the things you want to learn or need help with and experimenting with how well the system can deliver. 

“AI is a general-purpose technology; it does a lot of stuff, so the idea is that whatever field you’re in and whatever job you’re in, it’s going to affect aspects of your job differently than anyone else on the planet,” Mollick said. “It’s about thinking about how you want to use it…You have to figure out a way to work with the system…and the only way to do that is through experimenting.” 


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China’s Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

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China's Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.

Honor

Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.

The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.

The company, which spun off from Chinese tech giant Huawei in 2020, is looking to stand out from rivals with key features of the Magic V5, like artificial intelligence, battery and size.

Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.

In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.

Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.

Honor vs. Samsung

Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.

Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.

Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.

“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.

“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.

The thinness of a foldable phone has become a battleground for smartphone makers to appeal to consumers who want the large screen size the device has to offer without extra weight.

At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.

“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.

“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.

Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.

Honor talks up AI

Smartphone players, including Honor, have also looked to stand out via the AI features available on their device.

In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.

Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.

The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.

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AI virtual personality YouTubers, or ‘VTubers,’ are earning millions

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AI virtual personality YouTubers, or ‘VTubers,’ are earning millions

One of the most popular gaming YouTubers is named Bloo, and has bright blue wavy hair and dark blue eyes. But he isn’t a human — he’s a fully virtual personality powered by artificial intelligence.

“I’m here to keep my millions of viewers worldwide entertained and coming back for more,” said Bloo in an interview with CNBC. “I’m all about good vibes and engaging content. I’m built by humans, but boosted by AI.”

Bloo is a virtual YouTuber, or VTuber, who has built a massive following of 2.5 million subscribers and more than 700 million views through videos of him playing popular games like Grand Theft Auto, Roblox and Minecraft. VTubers first gained traction in Japan in the 2010s. Now, advances in AI are making it easier than ever to create VTubers, fueling a new wave of virtual creators on YouTube.

The virtual character – whose bright colors and 3D physique look like something out of a Pixar film or the video game Fortnite – was created by Jordi van den Bussche, a long time YouTuber also known as kwebbelkop. Van den Bussche created Bloo after finding himself unable to keep up with the demands of content creation. The work no longer matched the output.

“Turns out, the flaw in this equation is the human, so we need to somehow remove the human,” said van den Bussche, a 29-year old from Amsterdam, in an interview. “The only logical way was to replace the human with either a photorealistic person or a cartoon. The VTuber was the only option, and that’s where Bloo came from.”

Jordi Van Den Bussche, YouTuber known as Kwebbelkop.

Courtesy: Jordi Van Den Bussche

Bloo has already generated more than seven figures in revenue, according to van den Bussche. Many VTubers like Bloo are “puppeteered,” meaning a human controls the character’s voice and movements in real time using motion capture or face-tracking technology. Everything else, from video thumbnails to voice dubbing in other languages, is handled by AI technology from ElevenLabs, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. Van den Bussche’s long-term goal is for Bloo’s entire personality and content creation process to be run by AI.

Van den Bussche has already tested fully AI-generated videos on Bloo’s channel, but says the results have not yet been promising. The content doesn’t perform as well because the AI still lacks the intuition and creative instincts of a human, he said. 

“When AI can do it better, faster or cheaper than humans, that’s when we’ll start using it permanently,” van den Bussche said.

The technology might not be far away.

Startup Hedra offers a product that uses AI technology to generate videos that are up to five minutes long. It raised $32 million in a funding round in May led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Infrastructure fund.

Hedra’s product, Character-3, allows users to create AI-generated characters for videos and can add dialogue and other characteristics. CEO Michael Lingelbach told CNBC Hedra is working on a product that will allow users to create self-sustaining, fully-automated characters.

Hedra’s product Character-3 allows users to make figures powered by AI that can be animated in real-time.

Hedra

“We’re doing a lot of research accelerating models like Character-3 to real time, and that’s going to be a really good fit for VTubers,” Lingelbach said. 

Character-3’s technology is already being used by a growing number of creators who are experimenting with new formats, and many of their projects are going viral. One of those is comedian Jon Lajoie’s Talking Baby Podcast, which features a hyper-realistic animated baby talking into a microphone. Another is Milla Sofia, a virtual singer and artist whose AI-generated music videos attract thousands of views. 

Talking Baby Podcast

Source: Instagram | Talking Baby Podcast

These creators are using Character-3 to produce content that stands out on social media, helping them reach wide audiences without the cost and complexity of traditional production.

AI-generated video is a rapidly evolving technology that is reshaping how content is made and shared online, making it easier than ever to produce high-quality video without cameras, actors or editing software. In May, Google announced Veo 3, a tool that creates AI-generated videos with audio.

Google said it uses a subset of YouTube content to train Veo 3, CNBC reported in June. While many creators said they were unaware of the training, experts said it has the potential to create an intellectual property crisis on the platform.

Faceless AI YouTubers

Creators are increasingly finding profitable ways to capitalize on the generative AI technology ushered in by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.

One growing trend is the rise of faceless AI channels. These are run by creators who use these tools to produce videos with artificially generated images and voiceover that can sometimes earn thousands of dollars a month without them ever appearing on camera.

“My goal is to scale up to 50 channels, though it’s getting harder because of how YouTube handles new channels and trust scores,” said GoldenHand, a Spain-based creator who declined to share his real name.

Working with a small team, GoldenHand said he publishes up to 80 videos per day across his network of channels. Some maintain a steady few thousand views per video while others might suddenly go viral and rack up millions of views, mostly to an audience of those over the age of 65.

GoldenHand said his content is audio-driven storytelling. He describes his YouTube videos as audiobooks that are paired with AI-generated images and subtitles. Everything after the initial idea is created entirely by AI.

He recently launched a new platform, TubeChef, which gives creators access to his system to automatically generate faceless AI videos starting at $18 a month.

“People think using AI means you’re less creative, but I feel more creative than ever,” he said. “Coming up with 60 to 80 viral video ideas a day is no joke. The ideation is where all the effort goes now.”

AI Slop

As AI-generated content becomes more common online, concerns about its impact are growing. Some users worry about the spread of misinformation, especially as it becomes easier to generate convincing but entirely AI-fabricated videos.

“Even if the content is informative and someone might find it entertaining or useful, I feel we are moving into a time where … you do not have a way to understand what is human made and what is not,” said Henry Ajder, founder of Latent Space Advisory, which helps business navigate the AI landscape.

Others are frustrated by the sheer volume of low-effort, AI content flooding their feeds. This kind of material is often referred to as “AI slop,” low-quality, randomly generated content made using artificial intelligence. 

Google DeepMind Veo 3.

Courtesy: Google DeepMind

“The age of slop is inevitable,” said Ajder, who is also an AI policy advisor at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “I’m not sure what we do about it.”

While it’s not new, the surge in this type of content has led to growing criticism from users who say it’s harder to find meaningful or original material, particularly on apps like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

“I am actually so tired of AI slop,” said one user on X. “AI images are everywhere now. There is no creativity and no effort in anything relating to art, video, or writing when using AI. It’s disappointing.”

However, the creators of this AI content tell CNBC that it comes down to supply and demand. As the AI-generated content continues to get clicks, there’s no reason to stop creating more of it, said Noah Morris, a creator with 18 faceless YouTube channels.

Some argue that AI videos still have inherent artistic value, and though it’s become much easier to create, slop-like content has always existed on the internet, Lingelbach said.

“There’s never been a barrier to people making uninteresting content,” he said. “Now there’s just more opportunity to create different kinds of uninteresting content, but also more kinds of really interesting content too.”

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Elon Musk’s X is down for some users

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Elon Musk's X is down for some users

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s social media platform X was hit with an outage on Wednesday, leaving some users unable to load the site.

More than 15,000 users reported issues with the platform at around 9:53 a.m. ET, according to analytics firm Downdetector, which gathers data from users who spot glitches and report them to service.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by 10:30 a.m., though some users continue to report disruptions with the platform.

The site has suffered from multiple disruptions in recent months.

Representatives from X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the outage.

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