OpenAI has slashed the price of one of its most powerful AI engines –GPT-5.6 Luna – by 80%.
The move is seen by many as OpenAI’s attempt to compete with Chinese-made AI, which is viewed as nearly as good as U.S. AI – and often available for pennies-on-the-dollar.
The reduced price for Luna is available to users who access OpenAI’s servers directly from their computers – rather than to users who work with AI via ChatGPT.
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*China’s Nearly as Good AI – Kimi 3 – Now Available for Free Download: Researchers and other organizations with gigantic computer systems can now download OpenSource software Kimi 3 and experiment with it freely.
That ability to play with and customize Kimi 3 at no charge helps keep the pricing down on AI from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which don’t offer such free access to researchers.
Observes Bloomberg News: “Made-in-China AI models have surged in global popularity in recent times — led by DeepSeek — as they offer more affordable rates and comparable performance to U.S. offerings.”
*Amazon: The Pay-Off for AI Investment is Real: Amazon’s decision to invest heavily in building-out computer infrastructure to support AI in the cloud just brought back the bacon.
Observes writer Nathan Bomey: “Amazon’s AI cloud business soared in the second quarter, driving far higher revenue than expected.
“Amazon’s North America sales rose 16%, international sales increased 15% and AWS sales jumped 37%.”
*Microsoft: The Pay-Off for AI Investment is Real: Microsoft profits jumped 31% in Q2 for 2026, largely credited to its heavy investment in AI infrastructure.
Observes writer Emmy Martin: “Revenue at Azure, the company’s cloud computing service — which lets businesses rent computer power, storage and AI tools — drove much of the growth, surging 43%.
“The company said more than 30 million people were paying for Copilot, up from more than 20 million a quarter earlier.”
*AI Law Firm Will Insure Legal Work By Its AI Agents: AI-powered law firm Crosby is promising to include legal liability insurance for all work performed by its AI agents.
Crosby’s pitch: The firm’s AI agents will be held to the same liability standard as a human lawyer.
Observes Artificial Lawyer: “This is all about the autonomy of the legal agent — of trusting the agent to do the work.”
*ChatGPT Adds Yelp to its Database: Answers to some of your ChatGPT questions will now also rely on data supplied by business review platform Yelp.
That change should especially come in handy when you’re researching local businesses and services using ChatGPT and are looking for business reviews, photos and similar information currently stored on Yelp.
Observes writer Madison Mills: “As AI becomes a new front door to the Internet, content companies (like Yelp) are deciding whether to partner with that ecosystem — or compete with it.”
*Oops: AI Agent Triggers Million-Dollar-Plus Cost Overrun: Amazon found out the hard way that using a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ AI agent can cost you. Big time.
Specifically, Amazon says one of its AI-agent-driven projects went over-budget by 860%, triggering cost-overruns at $1.8 million.
Observes writer Jowi Morales: “These mistakes used to be trivially cheap, but AI models made them catastrophically expensive — especially as token spending drastically increased with the deployment of AI agents.”
*ChatGPT Will No Longer Write Like Famous Authors: One of the fun perks of ChatGPT – getting it to write in the style of your favorite author – is disappearing.
Instead, ChatGPT offers to incorporate the “broad qualities” of the writing style of say Stephen King, Charles Dickens or Ernest Hemingway, according to writer Kyle Orland.
Adds Orland: “Not all major LLMs (AI engines) treat these style imitation requests the same way, though. No Latency’s study found that Google’s Gemini consistently complied with requests to copy an author’s style.”
*Summer 2026 Guide to AI: One Prof’s Winners: Wharton Professor and AI expert Ethan Mollick has just released his guide to the best in AI.
His overall advice: For important work, don’t penny pinch. Use the best AI money can buy.
Observes Mollick: “For these issues, you will want to use the most advanced models you can get access to, which is either Claude’s most powerful models, Opus and Fable, or ChatGPT’s GPT-5.6 Sol, set to at least the “High” thinking levels.
“That is because these models have lower error rates and score much higher on ability tests in complex fields.”
*EPA: Feel Free to Pollute Our Environment, AI: The U.S. EPA has ruled that electricity power plants built exclusively to supply AI data centers are exempt from the Clean Air Act’s regulations on acid rain.
Observes Reuters: “The move is aimed at accelerating AI infrastructure development, easing pressure on regional power grids, and supporting the rapid expansion of data centers across the United States.”
Acid rain has been shown to trigger aquatic ecosystem collapse and degrade forests and soil.
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.