January 3rd Tech news roundup: ChatGPT to get ads, ASUS announces price hikes, Windows 11 SE is being discontinued

Welcome to the first weekly news roundup of 2026. Here’s what happened last week.

OpenAI may introduce “sponsored content” ads in ChatGPT

OpenAI is working on introducing ads in ChatGPT. The company is exploring the idea of introducing “sponsored content” in the AI’s responses. And it appears that the sponsored content will be prioritized in the answers that are generated by the bot. Reports indicate that OpenAI may display the ads in a sidebar next to the chat.

So far, ChatGPT has been completely free to use, with optional paid plans. This was eventually going to end. But is introducing ads the answer? This news has alarmed users, who have already raised concerns about the idea, asking whether the responses generated by ChatGPT could be influenced by the products from sponsors. If true, it is very likely that the target audience for ads will be non-subscribers, aka free users. It is unclear whether that’s what OpenAI is planning. If these ads are displayed for paid users, this could backfire, as it could see a mass exodus of users who may flock to ad-free rivals like Claude, or Gemini.

So why is it doing it? Money, of course. Google earned $237.8 Billion in ad revenue in 2030. Is it really surprising that OpenAI wants to make a profit from ChatGPT, the leading AI app in the world?

OpenAI hardens ChatGPT Atlas against prompt injection attacks

Staying on topic with ChatGPT, OpenAI announced that it has upgraded its AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, to protect it against prompt injection attacks. Agentic browsers such as Atlas are prone to a new form of malware called prompt injections. Google, Anthropic had warned about this threat earlier. Websites that have been hacked or contain malicious code could trick AI agents using malicious instructions in fake prompts, which could then be used to send sensitive data to the website.

In order to protect against such attacks, OpenAI has built an LLM-based automated attacker to find prompt injection attacks. It was trained end-to-end with reinforcement learning, to learn from its successes and failures. This process involved simulating a victim agent called the defender, which runs a counterfactual rollout of how the targeted victim agent would behave if it encountered a prompt injection attack. The result is analyzed, tweaked and repeated to train the bot, which should help it find threats in a real situation faster.

OpenAI has also announced a new feature called “Your Year with ChatGPT“, which allows users to recap how they interacted with the AI in 2025.

Users criticize Duolingo for using Dynamic Island on iPhone for ads

Popular language learning app, Duolingo, has been using the Dynamic Island on iPhones to promote in-app offers. The Dynamic Island, which is the large black strip that appears at the top of the screen on modern iPhones, is used for Live Activities and Notifications from apps. But, Duolingo used it to display ads like these.

Reddit users were quick to point out this practice violates Apple’s Design Guidelines, and suggested the original poster to report the app to Apple, calling for the app to be removed from the App Store.

Duolingo didn’t really have a great year in 2025, after announcing a shift to focus on AI-based content, and laying off contract workers. The language learning service has also drawn criticism from subscribers for its rather unusual teaching methods, which many users claim, do not effectively help them learn a new language.

Microsoft to end support for Windows 11 SE in October

Microsoft has announced its plans to discontinue Windows 11 SE. The operating system was announced in 2021, as a version for low-cost computers, to compete with Google’s ChromeOS for Chromebooks. But, Windows 11 SE never really took off, largely because devices powered by the OS weren’t readily available. And those that came with it had performance issues, and the lack of support for apps was another problem. While the other versions of Windows 11 were updated to version 25H2 last year, Windows 11 SE didn’t. In fact, the Redmond company had announced that it won’t release a feature update for SE.

Now, Microsoft has revealed that it will stop supporting Windows 11 SE from October 2026. This means it will not provide security updates or software patches for SE, beyond the said date.

Apple Fitness+ is getting an upgrade

Apple announced various updates for Apple Fitness+. Users can improve their health by using the Make Your Fitness Comeback program to do Strength, HIIT, and Yoga workouts over four-weeks. It consists of 3 workouts per week, one for each type for 10 minutes. Apple Watch users can earn the Ring in the New Year limited-edition award by closing all three Activity rings for 7 days in a row in January. Strava users with an Apple Watch can join the “Quit Quitting” challenge in the Strava app and complete log 12 workouts this month to earn an Apple Watch badge in the Strava app.

In addition to these, Apple has also added workouts featuring music from popular artists, and will release new Time to Walk episodes featuring various celebrities.

ASUS announces price hikes driven by AI demand

PC builders have been suffering through the shortage crisis for the past few months, and it looks like things are about to get worse in 2026. ASUS has announced that several of its products are set to receive price hikes, thanks to the shortage of DRAM, NAND, SSD parts. It is unclear which products will be impacted, and the company is yet to reveal the new pricing of its products. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Dell had announced a 30% price hike in December 2025. Micron announced that its subsidiary, Crucial, was exiting the consumer business to focus exclusively on enterprise clients.

The prices of RAM modules and SSDs have gone through the roof all over the world, with prices shooting up by over 100%. This is the price we have to pay for AI chatbots. Critical PC parts are nearly unaffordable, and it could also affect GPU prices soon. The rising costs of RAMs and SSDs are said to have delayed the release of next-gen consoles. That’s probably the only good thing we have seen during this whole ordeal.