January 10 Tech news roundup: OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, Disney+ tests vertical videos, Brave Browser’s ad-blocker now uses 75% less memory

ChatGPT Health lets you analyze your medical records

OpenAI announced ChatGPT Health, a new feature in the AI chatbot designed for health and wellness. ChatGPT users can access the Health section to connect wellness apps such as Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal. This is an isolated environment, that prevents other chats, apps from accessing your medical data. Users in the U.S. can connect their medical records, provided by b.well. Then they can ask questions related to their health. For example, you can ask it to summarize your recent test results, advice about your diet and workout routine, etc. According to OpenAI, over 230 million people interact with ChatGPT to ask health and wellness related questions every week.

OpenAI says that ChatGPT Health is designed to support medical care, not replace it. It also warns that the bot is not intended to be used for diagnosis or treatment. ChatGPT Health is currently rolling out to users with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans outside of the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. OpenAI says it is working on expanding access to Health, to bring it to all users on web and iOS in the coming weeks.

Disney+ is testing vertical videos

Disney is experimenting with vertical videos, similar to those that are available on YouTube Shorts, Instagram, TikTok, etc. According to an announcement from the company, these portrait-oriented videos are being tested on Disney+. Users can expect original short-form videos, repurposed clips from social media, scenes from Disney+ shows, etc. Disney believes these video formats will help increase user engagement on its platform.

It’s not alone, Netflix has also been dabbling with short videos. Such videos have risen in popularity over the past couple of years on social media, especially among mobile phone users. This could explain why streaming services are now heading in the same direction.  Experts believe that AI-driven personalization will change how people use streaming services.

Brave Browser makes its ad blocker more memory-efficient

Brave has had a major breakthrough in improving the performance of its browser.  Unlike most browsers out there, Brave ships with a native adblocker, written in the Rust programming language.  The company says that its Rust-based adblock engine now uses 75% less memory than before, and that it shaves off about 45MB of RAM across all platforms, i.e. Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. This is by default, you can save even more memory by enabling additional filter lists, to block more ads, thus boosting the performance further.

A blog post on the company’s website explains that Brave was able to achieve the milestone by refactoring the adblock engine to use a compact and efficient storage format called FlatBuffers. This in turn allowed the developers to move approximately 100,000 adblock filters from standard, heap-allocated Rust data structures, to a specialized, zero-copy binary format. In addition to this, Brave has also improved the storage efficiency by 30%, filter matching performance by 13%, memory allocations were reduced by 19%, and resources are shared between instantiations of adblock engines to reduce memory usage on desktop.

Users can update their app to Brave v1.85 to gain the improvements. Brave says that enhancements to its adblocker will also improve the battery life on devices. It is planning to bring additional optimizations in the next update for its browser.

007 First Light’s system requirements shock users

Fans of the upcoming James Bond game, 007 First Light, were in for quite a shock this week, when IO Interactive revealed the title’s system requirements. The minimum requirements to play 007 First Light at 1080p at 30 frames per second, requires a PC with 16GB of RAM, and 8GB of video memory. That seems fairly high for a game to run at 30 fps.

However, players who wish to run the game at 1080p 60fps will need a computer with 32GB of RAM, and 12GB of VRAM. That’s truly insane.

Not a lot of people have such powerful PCs. In fact, Steam’s Hardware Survey indicates that less than half of PC players own such a machine. It is unclear whether such a set up is required to play the game at 1080p natively, or if these requirements are needed to experience the game using upscaling technologies such as NVIDIA’s DLSS, AMD FSR, Intel XESS, etc. The unusually high system requirements have sent alarm bells ringing, with many users concerned about the optimization of the game. Some fans pointed out that the gameplay videos that were published by the studio recently had several frame drops.

007 First Light was originally scheduled to be launched on March 27, 2026, but the release was postponed to May 27, 2026. IO Interactive said that the launch date was pushed back to give the developers more time to polish and refine the game.

Google Play Store users are getting a small settlement payout

Did you receive an email that said that you are eligible for a settlement due to a class action lawsuit against Google Play Billing? Don’t worry, this time it’s not a scam, it’s real. The plaintiffs had claimed that Google had used its dominance to stifle competition such as more affordable alternative payment methods in Google Play Billing and the Play Store, which meant that app developers and users had no choice but to use the system for making purchases. As a result of this lawsuit, Google is issuing small settlements to users.

Users who were a resident of the United States or some U.S. territories, and bought an app or paid for an in-app purchase using Google Play Billing between 2016 and 2023, are eligible for the settlement. The payments are being sent automatically, and users report that they have received emails from Google and local authorities regarding the settlement. It appears that Google is paying users about $2, though the amount could be higher, based on how much the user spent on Google Play Billing.

The email indicates that by accepting the payment, users will give up the right to sue Google over the related claims. Users who wish to object to the settlement or opt out, must do so by February 19, 2026.