This week, ChatGPT’s new picture generator took center stage, but a few other significant events also occurred: Instagram added a fast-forward feature for reels, Google made its Gemini 2.5 Pro model available to all customers, and WhatsApp is now able to be configured as the iPhone’s default messaging and calling app. Let us examine the week’s top five technology-related stories.
Top tech news of the week:
1) ChatGPT goes down after viral Studio Ghibli trend:
Hours after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman urged users to reduce image production speed, ChatGPT went down for a brief while on Sunday.Compared to when it used DALL-E to generate images, ChatGPT was able to produce more accurate and nuanced images thanks to OpenAI unlocking its native image generating capabilities.
Social media users quickly started transforming their real-life photos into Studio Ghibli-style images using ChatGPT. Due to the increasing strain on the company’s GPUs, OpenAI limited image production capabilities even for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers as a result of this trend.
2) Google rolls out Gemini 2.5 Pro model for all users:
Google was discreetly introducing its newest language model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, to all users while the globe was giddy over ChatGPT’s new picture generating features. This reasoning model attempts to imitate human-level reasoning before responding to a query, much to OpenAI’s o3 Mini or DeepSeek R1.
Researchers at UC Berkley SkyLab created the open-source platform LMArena, where the new model is presently the top-ranked chatbot. Additionally, it scored 18.8% on Humanity’s Last Exam, compared to 8.6% for DeepSeek R1 and 14% for OpenAI o3 Mini (High).
Gemini 2.5 Pro excels in reasoning, standard code, and problems involving math and science. In comparison to Claude 3.7 Sonnett’s 5,00,000 token context window and o3 Mini’s 2,00,000 token context window, it also boasts a high context window of 1 million token, or nearly 7,50,000 words.
3) Grok AI takes center stage amid Studio Ghibli trend:
One of the greatest text-to-image creation models accessible right now, free of censoring from the firm, is xAI’s Grok 3. This week, customers who were attempting to use ChatGPT to produce Studio Ghibli-style photographs encountered a paywall and utilized the chatbot to convert their images into the well-known Japanese anime format, making it a popular substitute.
4) Instagram users can now fast-forward reels:
By long pressing on either side of the screen while the reels are playing, Instagram users may now fast-forward their reels by playing them at twice the speed. All Instagram users now have access to the new function, which is one of several updates to the Meta-owned service that come directly from Tik Tok.
5) WhatsApp can now be set as default messaging and calling app on iPhones:
With the release of WhatsApp’s most recent upgrade, version 25.8.74, iPhone users can now make the Meta-owned service their go-to app for calling and texting.
By setting WhatsApp as the default messaging and call app, users can avoid using Apple’s built-in Messages and Phone/FaceTime apps by having their iPhone start WhatsApp immediately when they make a call or send a message.
