THE RUNDOWN

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Gemini now has 1 billion monthly active users — making it the 14th Google product to reach that milestone. What's interesting is how people are actually using it: 63% of Gemini users are talking to it by voice, not typing. OpenAI's ChatGPT hit the same 1 billion mark around the same time, which means the two biggest AI assistants in the world are now operating at the same scale. The race just got a lot more interesting.

Brad Lightcap, who served as OpenAI's COO for years before moving to a special projects role, has announced he's leaving after eight years at the company. He shared the news in an internal memo. This continues a string of high-profile departures from OpenAI that's been going on for well over a year now — and it raises real questions about what's happening internally at the world's most-watched AI lab.

The FBI has put out a fresh alert warning that cybercriminals are breaking into people's online accounts specifically to steal personal and intimate images, then using them for extortion. Both adults and minors are being targeted. If you've got sensitive photos stored in cloud accounts or messaging apps, this is your reminder to check your account security settings and enable two-factor authentication everywhere you can.

Google is rolling out something called device-bound session credentials in Chrome — essentially tying your login session to the specific device you're using, so stolen session cookies become useless to attackers. It's a direct response to one of the most common ways hackers hijack accounts even after you've changed your password. This one's worth paying attention to if you use Chrome for anything important.

A vulnerability in Zoom allowed someone on a call to fully take control of another participant's device through a screen-sharing exploit. Zoom has since patched it, but the fact that it existed at all is a sobering reminder of how much access we hand over during video calls. If you haven't updated your Zoom app recently, do it today.

Linux users have been waiting a long time for this one. OpenAI has officially launched a dedicated ChatGPT desktop app for Linux, putting the operating system on equal footing with macOS and Windows. It's not a massive headline on its own, but for the significant chunk of African developers and tech professionals who run Linux, it's genuinely useful news.

Abbott, the company behind the popular Libre continuous glucose monitors, is partnering with Google Health to bring AI into diabetes management. The idea is to use AI to give users smarter, more personalised insights from their glucose data. For a continent where diabetes rates are rising fast, this kind of health tech partnership is worth watching closely.

U.S. venture firm Accel raised a $550 million fund focused on India and closed it in just weeks, oversubscribed, even though it still has more than half of its previous $650 million India fund left to deploy. That's a strong signal that investor appetite for Indian tech startups remains very high. It also puts into perspective how much global capital is chasing emerging-market tech opportunities right now — Africa included.

Attendees at the famous DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas apparently couldn't help themselves — the FBI's Atlanta field office confirmed it's investigating a suspected fake Wi-Fi hotspot attack that took place on a Delta flight carrying conference attendees. No arrests yet. It's almost funny, except that evil twin hotspot attacks are a real security threat that anyone connecting to public Wi-Fi anywhere in the world needs to understand.

More than a year after its big post-election surge, Bluesky's mobile app is seeing a steady drop in active users. The platform has been expanding its focus beyond the app itself, but the numbers on the ground tell a quieter story. It doesn't mean Bluesky is finished — its remaining community is still engaged — but the window for it to become a genuine Twitter/X alternative may be narrowing.

Big day. Between billion-user AI milestones and FBI warnings about your private photos, today's news is a sharp reminder that the same tech reshaping the world can also be pointed directly at you. Stay sharp out there.