Teri R. Moten, MBA, Your Business Problem Solver

Quick recap from today in Austin.

Thank you to SCORE Austin and Shannon Black, SCORE Austin Chair, for inviting me to speak at the Tool Belt to Trades Ownership Conference.

I had the opportunity to lead a session on AI for trades professionals and business owners, and I loved the conversations that came out of it. The room was filled with people building businesses, solving real problems, serving customers, and thinking seriously about what ownership can look like in the trades.

There were great speakers, great attendees, and strong vendor connections throughout the day.

One of the highlights was meeting Karyn Buggs. She is one of those people you meet and immediately know there is alignment for future collaboration.

If you are a CFO, CPA, finance leader, or part of an association that serves those professionals, Karyn is someone you should have on your radar for speaking, workshops, and training. She brings practical insight that professional audiences can actually use.

Grateful for the new relationships made today and looking forward to what comes next.

ChatGPT had a lot of updates roll out this week, and honestly, I was not surprised.

Over the weekend and especially on Monday, ChatGPT was acting a little wonky. When that happens, I usually start wondering what is changing behind the scenes.

I even mentioned it during a training session with a group of business professionals this week. I told them, “Mark my words, some updates are probably coming soon.”

Well, lo and behold.

This week, OpenAI rolled out several ChatGPT updates that are worth paying attention to, especially if you use ChatGPT for business, planning, writing, research, communication, or day-to-day work.

✅ The model picker is being simplified.

This should make it easier for everyday users to choose between faster answers and deeper reasoning without having to understand every model name.

✅ ChatGPT can now create interactive charts in some answers.

That matters if you are trying to understand trends, comparisons, numbers, or business data faster.

✅ Longer conversations can now include a table of contents.

This is helpful if you use ChatGPT for planning, research, proposals, training outlines, long projects, or anything where the conversation starts getting lengthy.

✅ Writing blocks are getting stronger for longer-form work.

That includes reports, notes, blog posts, documents, and other business writing where you need more than a quick answer.

✅ Some users can now draft and send emails directly from ChatGPT.

If Gmail or Outlook is connected, ChatGPT can help draft the email and let you send it from the same conversation. That also means people need to be more thoughtful about permissions, review, and what they connect.

✅ Memory is getting better at staying updated.

This matters for ongoing projects, goals, preferences, repeated workflows, and anything where you do not want to keep re-explaining the same context.

✅ There are new security updates, including Active Sessions and Lockdown Mode.

That matters because the more connected AI becomes to our work, the more access control, security, and guardrails matter.

✅ Career support is becoming more built into the platform.

People have already been using ChatGPT for resumes, interview prep, LinkedIn profiles, cover letters, and job search strategy for a while. That part is not new.

What is different now is that OpenAI is building more of that workflow directly into ChatGPT, including live job listings, freelance opportunities, and resume formatting tied to specific roles.

That is the bigger point.

This is not just about new features.

It is about the direction these tools are moving.

ChatGPT is becoming more connected to writing, research, charts, communication, career support, memory, security, and workflow support.

That does not mean every person or every organization should turn on every feature.

It does mean business owners, leaders, and professionals need to understand what is changing, what is useful, what needs guardrails, and where human judgment still has to stay in the process.

AI literacy is not just learning prompts.

It is understanding how these tools are changing the way we work, communicate, analyze, make decisions, and manage information.

Have you noticed any of these changes in ChatGPT this week?