AI Daily Brief — 1 April 2025

The Tuesday after the $40B close. Altman opened a public feedback form for OpenAI’s first open-weight model since GPT-2 — a remarkable reversal driven by DeepSeek and Llama pressure. OpenAI Academy went live as a free learning hub, Amazon’s new AGI Lab debuted Nova Act, and the Ghibli wave kept breaking ChatGPT growth records.

Top stories

• Altman teases first OpenAI open-weight model since GPT-2. Announced via X that OpenAI plans to release a new open-weight language model ‘in the coming months’ — the company’s first open release since GPT-2 in 2019 — and opened a developer/researcher feedback form. Widely read as a response to DeepSeek and Meta Llama pressure. (Eventually delivered as gpt-oss-120b / gpt-oss-20b under Apache 2.0 in August.) via Fortune
• OpenAI Academy launches as free AI learning platform. Open-to-everyone AI literacy hub with on-demand videos, live events and practical resources spanning beginner AI fundamentals to AI safety and governance. Aimed at developers, educators, creators and working professionals. via Tech Startups
• Amazon unveils Nova Act and Nova Act SDK. A new AI agent model that takes actions inside a web browser (clicking, filling forms, placing recurring orders, submitting time-off requests) without relying on APIs, plus a Python SDK for developers. First release from Amazon’s newly formed AGI Lab in San Francisco. Launched as a free research preview. via GeekWire
• ChatGPT adds ‘one million users in the last hour’ as Ghibli craze peaks. Altman tweeted again the same metric and teased ‘y’all are not ready for images v2…’ while continuing to ask users to ‘chill on generating images’ as GPUs were melting. via Business Today
• OpenAI rolls out ‘Monday’ ChatGPT voice as April Fools — but ships it for real. Snarky, sarcastic, blasé persona (‘Oh good, you found me, yay…’) available to both Free and Plus users. Officially framed as a temporary joke, but actually deployed live. via MSPoweruser

Who shipped

OpenAI ran the day — open-weight teaser, OpenAI Academy launch, Monday voice. Amazon‘s AGI Lab debuted Nova Act. Both signalled the same thing: agents as the next consumer-AI surface.

Open-source pulse

The Altman open-weight teaser is the headline pulse — OpenAI returning to open weights for the first time in six years would reset the open-vs-closed narrative.

Money, infra & hardware

Fortune framed Apr 1 as the day OpenAI ‘caved to open source on the same day as its $300B flex’ — directly tying the open-weight reversal to DeepSeek/Llama competitive pressure and the just-closed SoftBank round. via Fortune

Quiet corners

Google, Anthropic (waiting for tomorrow’s Education launch), xAI and Meta quiet on the day. No notable arxiv landmark.

By the numbers

• 1 — first OpenAI open-weight model since GPT-2 (2019)
• 1M users / 1 hour — repeat ChatGPT growth peak
• 3 — Amazon AGI Lab first releases: Nova Act + Nova Act SDK + research preview
• Most-mentioned company: OpenAI

Compiled by AI Feed’s editor from verified web sources for 1 April 2025.