This Billionaire Battle Just Got Personal, Musk vs. Altman Is the AI Drama of the Year!

The battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman is heating up. And we’re not just talking about personal remarks this time around.

A group led by Elon Musk offered to pay the nonprofit handling the operations of OpenAI. However, Sam Altman is not interested and even sends out a polite ‘no thank you’ note. If that was not enough, he offered to purchase Twitter after the dismissal.

The news comes just a month after Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman’s OpenAI, in an attempt to block the firm’s transition to a for-profit organization status.

This latest bid might be the final straw as the longstanding tensions between both organizations. Musk wants full control of a company that is thriving at its best during the era of the AI boom. The bid is supported by Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI which could combine with OpenAI after the deal as per a recently published report from the Wall Street Journal. The latter was the first to report Musk’s offer in the past.

Musk was the co-founder of OpenAI but chose to leave the organization before he took off to new heights of success. Instead, he chose to launch his own AI startup dubbed xAI two years back but it failed to get even close to the success of OpenAI.

Altman’s hilarious take on Musk’s offer came in the form of a post published on X. He offered to purchase Twitter for $9.7B if his archrival was interested in the bid. Both individuals are already busy in a continuous lawsuit. We’ve also seen Musk openly blast Altman’s Stargate project after Donald Trump resumed office for a second term. He called the project a waste of time as all investors involved lacked funding potential.

If that was not enough, he spoke about how OpenAI needed to focus more on the likes of being open-sourced and providing safety to users, which was the initial goal of the company. Musk (turned Harry Bōlz) and co got a little too personal after Altman dismissed the offer. They claimed that Altman was a huge scam while sharing the content of the CEO disclosing his meager salary on Capitol Hill.

OpenAI is working hard to transition and maintain its status of being a for-profit company, despite what others have to say. Altman has made it clear that this status is necessary for curating the best AI models today.

The lawsuit rolled out by Elon Musk against Altman claims the founders approached him for funding the company as the goal was to design AI to benefit humanity. Now, things have changed and the company is more focused on generating revenue and profits, more than anything else, Musk adds.

Even without the antitrust implications, a deal that huge would require Elon Musk and his team to raise huge funds. OpenAI stands at a current valuation of $157B in the latest round of funding shared last year in October. This makes it one of the world’s most valuable organizations in the private sector today. Furthermore, we’re seeing more investors such as SoftBank Group enter into serious talks for funding the company that could go up to $40B, which could make it stand at a valuation of $300B including other new funding sources.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: 21% Praise DeepSeek’s Performance, 36% Find ChatGPT More Helpful, But Pricing and Censorship Divide Users
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: 21% Praise DeepSeek’s Performance, 36% Find ChatGPT More Helpful, But Pricing and Censorship Divide Users

DeepSeek has shaken the world of AI and has gotten 2 million downloads within days of it being released in the US. The number of downloads are telling that the app is doing good, so Appfigures conducted its own study and looked at reviews to see what users are thinking about DeepSeek and if it is a good competition to ChatGPT or not. It was found that users seem somewhat satisfied and happy with both DeepSeek and ChatGPT with 83% and 89% reviews of these apps showing good user experience respectively. This means that DeepSeek is going to grow a lot as the response is good.

In terms of speed and ease of use, 29% of the reviews are saying positive things about DeepSeek while only 23% are saying this about ChatGPT. 21% of the users who have used DeepSeek are also saying good things about app’s performance while 15% of users are saying this about ChatGPT. On the other hand, 36% of the reviews express that ChatGPT is helpful while 31% of the reviews say the same thing about DeepSeek. ChatGPT also leads in creativity (17%) with DeepSeek trailing behind (10%). 9% of reviews on DeepSeek and ChatGPT are also praising both apps for their accuracy.

Some of the biggest drawbacks of DeepSeek told by users in their reviews are its lack of privacy and censorship (37%). Most of the users are aware that it is a Chinese based app so it is going to have some privacy concerns as well as restricted content. The biggest drawback of ChatGPT by users is pricing which is between $20-$200 a month and users conclude them as too expensive. On the other hand, DeepSeek is free to use so 14% of the reviews on DeepSeek say that they have switched from ChatGPT to DeepSeek because of the former's high prices.

9% of all ChatGPT reviews and 21% of its negative reviews were talking about high costs of ChatGPT in January 2024 which jumped up to 14% overall reviews and 30% negative reviews in January 2025. Some other issues people mentioned under DeepSeek’s reviews were trouble logging into the app (20%) and speed complaints (20%). 12% of ChatGPT’s reviews talked about trouble logging in while 10% complained about speed.

Read next: TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook Dominate Downloads; Top 10 Apps Earn $1.1B in January 2025
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook Dominate Downloads; Top 10 Apps Earn $1.1B in January 2025

AppFigures' latest analysis shows the most downloaded apps on Google Play and App Store as well as the apps that earned the highest revenue in January 2025. According to the estimates, TikTok was the most downloaded app on both platforms in January 2025, dethroning Instagram. Even though the US is getting major revenue from TikTok, it ranked fifth in terms of new TikTok downloads in December 2024. Indonesia topped the list with the most TikTok downloads in December 2024. TikTok got $262 million total revenue in January 2025, $221 million from iOS App Store and $50 million from Google Play.

Instagram got 49 million downloads in January 2025, getting most of its downloads from Google Play (42 million). Instagram couldn't get to the top ten in terms of revenue. All the apps in the top ten most downloaded list saw an increase in its downloads. The third most downloaded app on both platforms was Facebook with 39 million downloads. ChatGPT was the most downloaded app on the App Store (10 million) while it was sixth most downloaded app on App Store (21 million).

The top three most downloaded apps on both platforms overall were TikTok (49 million), Instagram (49 million) and Facebook (39 million). Threads was the third most downloaded app on the App Store with 9 million downloads in January 2025. Overall, the total number of downloads from the top ten most downloaded apps reached 337 million downloads which is an increase from December 2024.

TikTok’s revenue dropped 22% from $474 million to $262 million within a month but still managed to be the highest earning app. Despite being banned in the US, TikTok got most of its revenue from Japan, China and the UK. The second highest earning app on both platforms overall was YouTube with $153 million net revenue. Even though TikTok was also the highest earning app on the App Store ($211 million) as well, the highest earning app on Google Play was Google One ($63 million). Disney+ revenue grew 9% to $142 million and it was the third highest earning app in January 2025.

Tinder reached $115 million in January 2025 from $81 million in December 2024 while Max also reached $100 million. The only app which saw a decrease in its revenue was Tencent Video which saw a 21% decline and got $58 million revenue. Overall, the top ten highest earning apps collected $1.1 billion of net revenue in January 2025 from App Store and Google Play.

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• Global Internet Users Surpass Offline Population, Reaching 5.56 Billion in 2025
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Global Internet Users Surpass Offline Population, Reaching 5.56 Billion in 2025

The 2025 Global Digital Report talks about different digital trends, their roles in our lives and how these digital and AI trends are changing users' perceptions of them. The report states that right now the total population of the world is 8.2 billion, with 58.1% urban population. 5.78 billion people in the world are unique mobile phone subscribers which make about 70.5% of the global population. 5.56 billion (67.9%) individuals in the world use the internet, while there are 5.24 billion (63.9%) people in the world who have social media user identities.

The digital world is expanding rapidly and now there are twice as many internet users than people who are offline. The data also shows that even though 5.78 billion people in the world have smartphones, 220 million people among them do not use the internet or do not have internet access. Most of the people are turning to connected devices and services so they can do a lot more activities than they did years ago which shows that people’s digital behaviors are evolving over time. There was a 0.5% increase in unique mobile subscribers in January 2025 (5.78 billion) as compared to October 2024 (5.75 billion).

In some past surveys by GWI, the motivations of people for using the internet had fallen but now they have gotten reversed in 2025, with finding information being the top motivation for people to use the internet, with 62.8% of adults naming it their top reason. 6 in 10 (60.2%) users are also using the internet to stay in touch with their family and friends. Other reasons for using the internet include keeping up to date with news and events (55.0%), watching videos, tv shows or movies (54.7%) and researching how to do things (51.1%).

The report also showed how much time people are spending on using the internet, with a 0.6% increase in Q3 2024 from Q2 2024. Internet users over the ages of 55-64 have increased their use of the internet over the years, while people under age 45 have also increased their time spent on the internet. People between the ages 16-25 are spending the most time on the internet, with average 7 hours 35 minutes spent by females and 7 hours 11 minutes spent by males.

Take a look at the charts below for more insights:

H/T: DataRePortal / Digital 2025 Global Overview Report

Read next: Long-Form Wins: YouTube Users Ditch Shorts for Videos Over 30 Minutes
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

AI for All? Sam Altman Weighs the Challenges of Equitable AI Distribution

A new post was published on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s blog that spoke about the company’s ideas of making the benefits of AI widely distributed for all.

He shared more on the matter including how a computed budget was amongst the many other strange-sounding ideas that he was ready to put forth. The goal was to make the masses benefit from the approach.

The historical impact of this technological progress hints that most of the metrics that users worry about are getting better with time. Altman mentioned that the balance between matters like capital and labor could get messy and it might need early intervention.

Solutions to such issues including Altman’s concept for compute budget (i.e. bringing AI to the masses) might appear easier said than done. Today, AI is affecting the labor market and giving rise to serious job cuts and downsizing in several departments. Experts issued a warning that mass unemployment is a potential outcome relating to the rise of AI when not supported by the correct government policies.

This isn’t the first time, Altman shared how AGI is also very near which can solve even the most complex issues out there today. No matter what, AGI ceases to be perfect and will never compare to human potential. Altman says this could require serious human supervision as well as direction.

All AGI systems won’t have the best ideas and while it can do some good things, it will be bad at so many others. The real value related to AGI will arise from running systems on a big scale. Similar to the thinking of Anthropic’s CEO, Altman sees thousands of those capable of tackling tasks in different fields of work.

It’s definitely not a cheap vision but Altman says that a person can spend huge sums of money and get the right gains in return with AI. This is why OpenAI is ready to start talks to raise $40B in funding. They’ve pledged to spend $500B with the help of partners on the huge data network.

Altman also speaks about cases where the costs for AI fall up to ten times every year. In other words, while pushing AI boundaries won’t make it cheaper, more users are going to get access to capable systems along the way.

So many inexpensive AI models keep popping up as we speak. This includes DeepSeek and more that support this cause. There’s similar evidence that suggests both training and development costs fall to a new low. Both Altman and Amodei argued that there are massive investments at stake here that need to attain the AGI level of AI and more.

In terms of how the company hopes to roll out these AGI systems, Altman refused to get into the minute details. He said that some major decisions will soon be coming and there’s a lot to consider about the safety of this project.

Let’s not forget how OpenAI is in the midst of converting into a corporate structure that’s far from traditional. It will reach $100B in revenue by 2029 which is equal to what was seen for Target and Nestle’s yearly sales.

Image: DIW-AIgen

Read next: UC Berkeley Researcher Criticizes Billion-Dollar AGI Race, Says AI Can’t Know Everything
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Long-Form Wins: YouTube Users Ditch Shorts for Videos Over 30 Minutes

Digital i, a software company, analyzed data of American YouTube users and found that most of theme prefer long-form over short-form videos. YouTube has invested a lot on its vertical short-form videos that resemble TikTok videos but most of the YouTube are more interested in long-form videos on the platform. The analysis also found that there was an 8% increase in time consumed watching long form videos on YouTube by American users as compared to October 2024.

The respondents of the survey also said that they spend 73% of their YouTube watch time while watching videos that are more than 30 minutes long. Only 27% of the respondents said that they spend their YouTube watch time by watching short-form videos or videos that are shorter than 30 minutes. YouTube invited a lot of creators to its Shorts monetisation program and a lot of people thought that it would bring more traffic to Shorts and decrease traffic on long-form videos.

YouTube has also improved its streaming operation by focusing on mobile-oriented broadcasts which are well liked by Gen-Z. There was a 21% YoY increase in 18-24 year olds who increased their YouTube time by watching long-form videos on their mobile phones. But even with users’ interest in long-form videos, it doesn't mean that short-form videos on YouTube are not getting any response. Shorts are also growing on YouTube, but a little slower than long-form content.

Additionally, Digital i’s research revealed that long-form content consumption in the U.S. grew from 65% in October 2023 to 73% in October 2024, marking an 8-percentage-point increase. Among 18–24-year-olds, long-form viewing on mobile devices surged from 58% to 79% during the same period, reflecting a 21-percentage-point rise. This demographic also spent an average of 2.7 hours per day on YouTube between July and October 2024, watching around 25 videos daily. The data further indicated that YouTube viewing time decreases with age, with younger users showing the highest engagement levels.

H/T: Digital i

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Major Economies, Minor Trust: Why the World’s Biggest Powers Are Losing Credibility

A new 2025 by Edelman Trust Barometer global survey finds that there has been a distrust in government institutions among people. Edelman Trust Index calculates trust percentages of people in government, business ideas and media and the survey was based on 33,000 people from 28 countries. According to the survey, there was no change in trust percentage in 2025 as compared to 2024 and it is still steady at 56% global average. But 54% of the countries in the survey saw some decline in trust percentages among people in their respective countries.

The survey also found that five out of ten world’s biggest economies are ranked among least trusted countries, with Japan being the least trusted at 37%, Germany at 41% and the UK at 43%. The US and France were also among the least trusted nations because of its institutions with 47% and 48% trust percentages respectively. There was a 9% increase in trust in Argentina as compared to 2024 after the elections of Javier Milei. The report also stated that countries like South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria and Argentina which recently held national elections or got leadership changes saw an increase in trust.

China had the most trust percentage out of all the countries surveyed at 77% which was a 2% decrease from 2024. It was followed by Indonesia (76%), India (75%), UAE (72%) and Saudi Arabia (71%). The survey also found that 61% of the respondents showed moderate or high sense of grievances meaning that they believe that the governments of their countries are making their lives harder.

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 highlights a growing sentiment that governments are increasingly disconnected from the people they are meant to serve. Many believe that governments are forcefully imposing policies without considering public will, prioritizing power retention over genuine governance. This perception is fueled by the lack of moral accountability, as leaders often pursue agendas that benefit political or elite interests rather than addressing the real needs of their citizens. Democratic systems, once seen as pillars of representation, appear broken to many, with declining civic participation reflecting widespread disillusionment. People feel unheard, as governments fail to engage in meaningful dialogue or understand the evolving aspirations of their populations. This crisis of trust suggests a global demand for a new governance model—one that transcends outdated systems and fosters transparency, accountability, and authentic public involvement to restore faith in leadership.

Country	Election/Leadership Change (Past Year)	Trust Index 2025 (%)	Change from 2024 (%)
China	No	77	-2
Indonesia	Yes	76	+3
India	Yes	75	0
UAE	No	72	-2
Saudi Arabia	No	71	-1
Thailand	Yes	66	-4
Malaysia	No	66	-2
Singapore	No	65	-1
Nigeria	No	65	+4
Kenya	No	63	-1
Mexico	Yes	57	-2
Netherlands	Yes	57	+1
South Africa	Yes	53	+4
Canada	No	52	-1
Brazil	No	51	-2
Italy	No	50	0
Sweden	No	50	+1
Australia	No	49	-2
Colombia	No	49	+2
Argentina	Yes	48	+9
France	Yes	48	+1
Ireland	No	48	+1
U.S.	Yes	47	+1
Spain	No	44	-2
UK	Yes	43	+4
Germany	Yes	41	-4
South Korea	Yes	41	-2
Japan	Yes	37	-2

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World