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Traveling through Italy, I used ChatGPT as a tour guide for the moments where my mom and I wandered into interesting little corners, alleys and buildings where our curiosity was piqued with no tour guide around.

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As I stood with my mom under the blistering sun in Rome waiting for our audio tour of the Pantheon to begin, I decided to kill some time with ChatGPT. 

“Tell me about the Pantheon in Rome,” I said.

The AI tool returned a bunch of information in bullet points that was helpful but hardly made for an interesting read. So I tweaked my prompt and gave ChatGPT a bit more info. 

“Pretend you’re a tour guide and tell that to me in a more interesting fashion,” I wrote. 

My mom and I were in the midst of an epic seven-city trip in August to celebrate her 60th birthday. She had no idea that I was bringing along a digital companion.

“Welcome, Chef, to one of Rome’s most extraordinary treasures—The Pantheon,” the AI tool responded. (I asked ChatGPT to refer to me as Chef several months earlier to make the banter more entertaining.)

“As we stand here in front of this architectural marvel, let me take you on a journey back in time, where gods, emperors, and artists all intersect in this sacred space,” the chatbot wrote.

Since its launch in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence, along the way lifting the company’s valuation to an eye-popping $157 billion. AI startups have raised $111 billion in funding since the start of 2023, according to Crunchbase, and big tech companies have bought millions of Nvidia’s processors to train AI models. The generative AI market is predicted to surpass $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

Yet, for many everyday internet users, figuring out what to even do with ChatGPT can be quite perplexing. 

I use ChatGPT quite a bit. Almost weekly, I give it a list of five movies I want to watch and force it to pick one for me. I recently had it draw up a contract, and I’ve asked it to summarize long articles.

But my favorite ChatGPT use case so far has been as a tour guide in Italy. 

“When you enter, look up,” the chatbot wrote, as we began our Pantheon visit. “That dome, Chef, is nothing short of a masterpiece. It’s the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, and it’s been like that for almost two millennia.” 

ChatGPT’s 400-word write up was absolutely on par with the audio tour we had purchased, though the headset version did include our tickets for entrance.

Elsewhere on our trip, ChatGPT told us that the central figure of the Trevi Fountain was Neptune riding a chariot pulled by sea horses, and explained why Rome’s Stadio Olimpico still maintained a monument for Benito Mussolini.

“This particular monument has remained, partly because it is seen as a historical artifact,” the chatbot said.

ChatGPT explained to us about why truffles were such a common ingredient in Florence’s cuisine and how Austrian Archduke Maximilian I served as viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia in Milan before later being installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III. 

Acting as a tour guide in Rome, ChatGPT pointed out Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer at the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church in Rome.

Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC

We still need tour guides. For now

If you’re worried about the future of the human tour guide industry, rest assured that we used plenty of them across Italy.

In Vatican City, our tour guide, Amy, did an excellent job cutting the enormous line to get through security and into the Holy City. She showed us the art throughout the Vatican and prepared us to see the Sistine Chapel.

She also did what technology never could — she spun the Sfera con Sfera art structure in the Vatican’s Courtyard of the Pinecone. Spinning the enormous bronze sphere is a privilege reserved for the Vatican’s trusted tour guides. 

My mom and I were grateful for the guide who showed us the spot where Julius Caesar was cremated in Rome, and for the one who led a boat tour of the five towns of Cinque Terre. Human guides also led us through the vineyards in Tuscany, a hidden courtyard in Venice, where the climactic scene of “Casino Royale” was filmed, and George Clooney’s villa in Lake Como.

But there were numerous moments when we wandered into interesting little corners, alleys and buildings and were able to satisfy our curiosity by turning to ChatGPT.

Perhaps the best example came when we left the Pantheon and walked across the piazza into Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The church was free to enter but we knew very little about it. So I asked ChatGPT. 

“Tucked away just behind the Pantheon, this is one of the few Gothic churches in Rome, and it’s filled with treasures that tell the story of a city where the ancient and the sacred come together,” the chatbot wrote. 

Among those treasures was a sculpture near the church’s altar. 

“To your left, you’ll find one of the church’s most famous artworks — Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer,” ChatGPT said. “This stunning statue shows Christ holding the cross, with a gentle, almost serene expression. It’s a powerful work that captures both the humanity and divinity of Christ, and it’s remarkable to think that it was sculpted by the same hands that created the Sistine Chapel.”

A week later, my mom and I would have to fight off other tourists just to get a clean photo of Michelangelo’s David in Florence. But at the church in Rome, we were alone, with our friendly chatbot, at a historical statue created by the same artist.

WATCH: OpenAI warns of AI misinformation ahead of election

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Waymo offers teen accounts for driverless rides

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Waymo offers teen accounts for driverless rides

Waymo announced it is now offering teen accounts for its self-driving car service Waymo One, beginning in Phoenix, Arizona.

Courtesy of Waymo

Waymo announced Tuesday that it is offering accounts for teens ages 14 to 17, starting in Phoenix.

The Alphabet-owned company said that, beginning Tuesday, parents in Phoenix can use their Waymo accounts “to invite their teen into the program, pairing them together.” Once their account is activated, teens can hail fully autonomous rides.

Previously, users were required to be at least 18 years old to sign up for a Waymo account, but the age range expansion comes as the company seeks to increase ridership amid a broader expansion of its ride-hailing service across U.S. cities. Alphabet has also been under pressure to monetize AI products amid increased competition and economic headwinds.

Waymo said it will offer “specially-trained Rider Support agents” during rides hailed by teens and loop in parents if needed. Teens can also share their trip status with their parents for real-time updates on their progress, and parents receive all ride receipts.

Teen accounts are initially only being offered to riders in the metro Phoenix area. Teen accounts will expand to more markets outside California where the Waymo app is available in the future, a spokesperson said.

Waymo’s expansion to teens follows a similar move by Uber, which launched teen accounts in 2023. Waymo, which has partnerships with Uber in multiple markets, said it “may consider enabling access for teens through our network partners in the future.”

Already, Waymo provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, and the company is preparing to bring autonomous rides to Miami and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

In June, Waymo announced that it plans to manually drive vehicles in New York, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo said it applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan.

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Elon Musk’s X says Indian government ordered over 2,000 accounts blocked, including Reuters

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Elon Musk's X says Indian government ordered over 2,000 accounts blocked, including Reuters

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at the White House to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s X said Tuesday that the Indian government ordered the company to block 2,355 accounts, including Reuters, in the country.

“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action- within one hour- without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” X’s global government affairs account posted.

The main Reuters account, along with ReutersWorld, was blocked Saturday for users in India, the news service said. Screenshots showed the message “Account withheld @Reuters has been withheld in IN in response to a legal demand.”

The Indian government’s Press Information Bureau told Reuters that no government agency had required blocking the account and said it was working with X to resolve the issue. The accounts were restored on Sunday.

Read more CNBC tech news

The statement by X on Tuesday is the latest development in an ongoing censorship legal battle between Musk’s social media site and the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

X sued Modi’s government in March, accusing India’s IT ministry of unlawfully expanding online censorship to allow the easier removal of content.

Musk often refers to himself as a free speech absolutist and has said his takeover of Twitter was partly due to what he viewed as the unfair restriction of conservative views and voices.

The Tesla CEO swiftly made changes to moderation after he acquired the site, which he later renamed to X.

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Robinhood CEO downplays OpenAI concerns on tokenized stock structure

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Robinhood CEO downplays OpenAI concerns on tokenized stock structure

Robinhood CEO defends OpenAI stock token offering

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says it’s not “entirely relevant” that the trading platform’s so-called tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX aren’t technically equity in the companies.

It comes after OpenAI raised concerns about the product, which is designed to give users in the European Union exposure to various U.S. stocks — including private companies, which are less liquid than publicly listed firms.

OpenAI last week warned that Robinhood’s stock tokens do not represent equity in the company and said in a post on X that, “any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval — we did not approve any transfer.”

Robinhood says its OpenAI stock tokens are “enabled by Robinhood’s ownership stake in a special purpose vehicle.”

“It is true that these are not technically equity,” Tenev, who co-founded Robinhood in 2013 with fellow entrepreneur Baiju Bhatt, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Tuesday, echoing his initial response to OpenAI’s concerns.

Tenev said that OpenAI’s complex company structure enables institutional investors to gain exposure to the company through “various instruments, like equity upon the event of a conversion to a for-profit at a later date.”

OpenAI was initially founded as a non-profit organization. However, it has since evolved to include a for-profit entity, which is owned by the non-profit.

“In and of itself, I don’t think it’s entirely relevant that it’s not technically an equity instrument,” he said. “What’s important is that retail customers have an opportunity to get exposure to this asset” — even if it’s a private company — due to the disruptive nature of AI, he added.

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On Monday, the Bank of Lithuania, which is Robinhood’s lead authority in the European Union, told CNBC it was “awaiting clarifications” regarding the structure of the company’s stock tokens following OpenAI’s statement last week.

“Only after receiving and evaluating this information will we be able to assess the legality and compliance of these specific instruments,” Bank of Lithuania spokesman Giedrius Šniukas told CNBC. “The information for investors must be provided in clear, fair, and non-misleading language.”

Tenev said in response to the Lithuanian regulator’s comments that Robinhood is “happy to continue to answer questions from our regulators.”

“Since this is a new thing, regulators are going to want to look at it, and we’ve built this program in a way that we believe will withstand scrutiny — and we expect to be scrutinized as a large, innovative player in this space,” he told CNBC.

Watch CNBC's full interview with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev

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