This week: ChatGPT starts carrying ads, tech-support scams change disguise, and the RAM squeeze bites
A Friday read on what actually happened across AI, hardware, and the web. Curated, not chased. If nothing mattered, we’d say so.
ChatGPT starts carrying ads
OpenAI said this week it is testing “Sponsored Agents” — its first proper advertising inside ChatGPT. Click one and, instead of being sent to a website, you drop into a labelled chat with a brand’s own AI agent, right there in ChatGPT. The furniture retailer Wayfair and the home-services site Angi are among the first testers, in the US for now. OpenAI says the ads are labelled, and its young advertising business is already earning at a rate of about a billion dollars a year.
Why it matters to you: until now, when ChatGPT recommended something, it had no stake in the answer. That is starting to change. A sponsored agent is an advert wearing the assistant’s helpful voice — friendly, conversational, and paid to sell you something. It doesn’t make ChatGPT useless; it means there’s a new question worth asking when it points you somewhere: is this helping me, or selling to me? Look for the “sponsored” or “ad” label, and when a recommendation could earn someone money, treat it like a salesperson’s — worth hearing, worth checking somewhere independent before you buy.
Verify it yourself: OpenAI — Testing ads in ChatGPT · Digiday
Tech-support scams change their disguise
Malwarebytes flagged this week that tech-support scams have moved on from the old full-screen “your computer is infected — call this number” pop-up. The newer version is less obvious: scammers buy sponsored search ads, or tamper with the search box on trusted sites, so a fake “support” phone number turns up right where you’d expect the real one — beside a bank, a streaming service, a software name you recognise. You think you’ve found the official line. You’ve found theirs.
Why it matters to you: the danger has moved from an obviously scary pop-up to something that looks completely ordinary, which is exactly what makes it work. One habit beats it: never phone a support number that a search result, an ad or a pop-up hands you. Reach the company the long way instead — type the web address you already know, or use the number on the back of your card or on a real bill — and take the number from there yourself. Genuine companies don’t cold-call about your PC, and they won’t ask for gift cards, bank transfers or remote access to “fix” it.
Verify it yourself: Malwarebytes — tech support scams look different now · FTC — how to spot and report tech-support scams
The RAM squeeze bites
We’ve mentioned the memory shortage before; this week it got sharper. The research firm IDC now expects PC shipments to fall about 11% this year — a steep downgrade from its earlier numbers — because the memory that goes into ordinary computers is being diverted to AI data centres, which pay more for it. Prices are following: a mid-range DDR5 kit that cost around $90 a year ago now runs several times that, and the big makers — Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer and Asus — have warned of PC price rises of 15–20%. Some builders have even started selling desktop PCs with no memory fitted at all, leaving you to buy the now-pricey RAM separately.
Why it matters to you: if you genuinely need a new machine, the era of ever-cheaper computers is pausing, and waiting is unlikely to make it cheaper any time soon. A few practical moves: buy the memory you actually need rather than over-speccing RAM you’ll never use; if you’ve got your eye on a particular machine, sooner beats later this year; and read the spec sheet before you pay — check that memory is included, and note how much. The AI badge on the lid isn’t the number that matters here; the one in the spec list is.
Verify it yourself: Tom’s Hardware — IDC cuts its 2026 PC forecast · PCWorld — PC makers warn of up to 20% rises
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