Is the new ChatGPT actually worth trying again?
If you already pay for ChatGPT, the version inside your account this morning is meaningfully better — and the one repetitive admin job you gave up on six months ago is worth another go today. That's the whole briefing.
Jeff Brook
AI Researcher — Founder, AI Daily News
If you already pay for ChatGPT, the version inside your account this morning is meaningfully better — and the one repetitive admin job you gave up on six months ago is worth another go today. That's the whole briefing. Everything else in the feed was lab news, customs paperwork, and economic commentary that doesn't change what you do on Monday.
Is the new ChatGPT actually worth trying again?
Yes — if you're one of the people who tried it, found it flaky on anything longer than a single question, and quietly stopped using it.
OpenAI released GPT-5.5 today. It rolled out automatically to Plus, Business, Pro and Enterprise accounts — no install, no price change, nothing to click. The headline claim that matters to you: it's built to finish multi-step jobs instead of drifting halfway through and handing you back a mess.
In plain terms, that means you can stop feeding it tiny tasks ("draft one reply") and start handing over the whole job ("read these three supplier emails, draft replies, list what I need to decide, flag anything odd"). The old version would stall on that. This one is designed to push through to the end.
Who should try it this week: accountants doing month-end reconciliations, agency owners turning client briefs into project plans, salon and restaurant managers writing rotas and chasing suppliers, tradespeople writing quotes from site notes.
What to do next: log into ChatGPT, click the model name at the top of a new chat, select GPT-5.5, and give it one real job from your actual inbox — not a demo. Pick the admin task you hate most. Hand it over end-to-end. See what comes back.
Should I worry about staff feeding customer data into it?
Yes, and this week is the moment to check.
The Risk Editor flagged the quiet problem: as ChatGPT gets better at finishing jobs, staff are tempted to let it do things rather than just draft them. The moment it touches a customer record, an invoice, or a booking, you've created a new data flow. Under UK GDPR that's your problem, not OpenAI's.
The specific trap: free ChatGPT accounts are not covered by the same data-protection terms as paid Business accounts. If your office manager is pasting client names, phone numbers, or financial details into a personal free account, that's the cheapest GDPR fine waiting to happen.
What to do next: today, ask your team one question — "which AI tools are you using, and which account are you logged into?" If anyone says "my personal ChatGPT," move them onto a Business seat (around £20 a user a month) before the end of the month.
Quick hits
- HMRC refreshed its Customs Declaration Service guidance today, including the "known error workarounds" page. Only relevant if you import or export goods — if you do, ask your freight agent or customs clerk to eyeball the update before the next shipment. Everyone else can ignore it.
- Supermarket prices — BBC traced why orange juice, butter, chocolate and coffee keep climbing. Useful context if you run a café or restaurant re-pricing a menu this quarter.
- Service charges are coming under government scrutiny, per BBC. Worth watching if you rent a commercial unit in a managed building.
The bottom line
The version of ChatGPT your staff already pay for got noticeably smarter today — spend twenty minutes testing it on a real job before you buy any new AI tool this month.
That's today's briefing. Subscribe free to get this in your inbox every morning.