The AI assistant wars went head-to-head: OpenAI launched GPT-4o — a faster, free, voice-native model — one day before Google I/O answered with Gemini woven through search, Android, and everything else. Between them, the two events sketched the future of the phone as a conversational device. The week's quietest story may age the best: AT&T signed a definitive commercial agreement with AST SpaceMobile, moving space-based cellular from science project toward product. And the FCC used a new enforcement tool for the first time, branding the 'Royal Tiger' robocall operation as a formally designated threat group.
The satellites launched the previous week found their voice: SpaceX and T-Mobile exchanged the first text messages ever sent through Starlink's direct-to-cell constellation to ordinary smartphones — six days from launch to working service. In Washington, the SEC's X account was hijacked to post a fake bitcoin-ETF approval that moved billions in market value before the real approval landed a day later — a compromised phone number, not a platform hack, and the agency had no multi-factor authentication enabled. And OpenAI opened the GPT Store, its app-store moment, betting that custom chatbots become a platform economy with revenue sharing to follow.