OpenAI has announced a new version of its ChatGPT Pro subscription that costs $100 per month. The new Pro tier offers “5x more” usage of its Codex coding tool than the $20 per month Plus subscription and “is best for longer, high-effort Codex sessions,” OpenAI says.

The company is introducing the new tier as it tries to win over users from Anthropic and its popular Claude Code tool. ChatGPT’s $100 per month option will directly compete with Anthropic’s “Max” tier for Claude, which costs the same price. It also offers a middle ground between the $20 per month Plus tier and the $200 version of the Pro tier.

(Yes, there are now two tiers of “Pro”; while the new tier “still offers access to all Pro features,” OpenAI says that the more expensive one has even higher usage limits.)

According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Plus will “will continue to be the best offer at $20 for steady, day-to-day usage of Codex, and the new $100 Pro tier offers a more accessible upgrade path for heavier daily use.” OpenAI also offers an $8 per month Go tier and a free tier.

For years, humanoid robots felt like something you watched on social media. Impressive, yes. Practical, not quite. That line just got blurry.

A new factory in China is now producing humanoid robots at a pace that feels closer to car manufacturing. One robot rolls off the line every 30 minutes.

That adds up to about 10,000 units a year. This is not a prototype phase anymore. This is real production.

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Inside China’s humanoid robot factory

The production line comes from a partnership between Leju Robotics and Dongfang Precision Science & Technology. What makes this facility stand out is how structured and repeatable the process has become.

There are 24 precision assembly stages. On top of that, 77 inspection steps check everything before a robot leaves the line. That level of testing matters because reliability has always been a weak spot for humanoid machines. Efficiency also jumped. The company says output improved by more than 50 percent compared to older production methods.

Then there is flexibility. The system can switch between robot models without shutting everything down. That means the same factory can serve multiple industries, from automotive to home appliances. This is how you move from cool tech to actual business.

Why humanoid robot production at 10,000 units matters

The robotics industry has reached a turning point. It is no longer enough to show what a robot can do. Companies now need to prove they can build them at scale.

That shift is showing up across the market.

• Agibot has already hit 10,000 units
• Unitree Robotics is planning a major expansion with new funding
• UBTECH Robotics is working to lower costs to below $20,000 per robot

Investors are watching production numbers closely. High output signals that a company can move beyond demos and into real deployment. It also shows confidence that there will be actual demand.

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The shift to large-scale humanoid robot manufacturing

There is another important change here that is easy to miss. Companies are splitting roles. In this case, Leju Robotics focuses on design and software. Dongfang Precision Science & Technology handles production and scaling. This model looks a lot like how other tech industries evolved. One group builds the brain. Another builds the product at scale. That separation could speed things up across the entire robotics space.

What is still holding humanoid robots back

Even with all this progress, one big problem remains. Software. Building the body is getting easier. Teaching it how to function in the real world is still difficult. Homes, warehouses and public spaces are unpredictable. Objects vary in shape. Lighting changes. Tasks that seem simple for humans can confuse a machine. Factories can now produce thousands of robots. That does not guarantee those robots will be useful right away. The pressure is shifting toward AI developers to close that gap.

What this means to you

This might feel far removed from everyday life. It is not. As production ramps up, costs usually come down. That opens the door for more businesses to adopt humanoid robots. You could start seeing them in warehouses, retail environments or service roles sooner than expected. At the same time, this raises questions about jobs, safety and how comfortable people feel interacting with machines that look and move like humans. The speed of this shift is what stands out. What felt experimental last year is now moving toward mainstream deployment.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

Humanoid robots are entering a new phase. The conversation is no longer about whether they can be built. It is about how quickly they can be produced and where they will actually work. Factories like this one in China are setting the pace. Now the rest of the industry has to keep up.

If humanoid robots become common in workplaces, where would you draw the line between helpful automation and going too far? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

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YouTube Shorts is rolling out a new AI-powered feature giving creators an easy way to realistically clone themselves on camera. The launch, hinted at earlier this year, reflects the platform’s fraught relationship with AI-generated content, adding more generative features while struggling to contain AI slop, deepfake scams, and impersonations.

YouTube says the new tool will let users create a digital version of themselves, called an avatar, that can be inserted into existing Shorts videos or used to generate entirely new ones. The company said avatars will “look and sound like you,” framing them as a safer and more secure way to use AI to create new content.

Creating an avatar is a bit more involved than simply pressing a button, but it sounds fairly straightforward. In a blog post outlining the process, YouTube said users must first record a “live selfie” capturing their face and voice while following a series of prompts. For the best results, the company recommends good lighting, a quiet area, a background free of other people or images of faces, and holding the phone at eye level.

Once avatars are made, users can select “make a video with my avatar” while creating a video to generate a clip from prompts, which can be up to eight seconds long, according to 9to5google. Users can also add their avatar to “eligible Shorts” in their feed, though YouTube did not specify what makes a Short eligible.

The AI avatar feature comes with fairly tight restrictions. They can only be used in the creator’s own original videos, who also control whether their Shorts can be remixed. The creator can delete their avatar or videos where it appears at any time, YouTube says. Avatars that aren’t used to create new content for three years will be automatically deleted.

Not everyone will be able to use the feature immediately. YouTube says the tool “will be rolling out gradually,” though it did not give a timeline or indication of where it will be available first. Creators must also be at least 18 and own an existing YouTube channel, the company says.

Its arrival comes as one of Google’s main AI rivals, OpenAI, pulls back from video generation. The startup said it was sunsetting its Sora video tool last month after a year of struggling to get the wannabe social platform off the ground. It was costly and faced a parade of copyright challenges, deepfake controversies, and slop that made it an unattractive bet for investors ahead of an anticipated IPO this year.