WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ready to restart U.S. mediation efforts between Egypt and Ethiopia with an eye toward resolving long-standing issues of water sharing from the Nile River.
Washington-led mediations began during Trump's first term, but they effectively collapsed in 2020, when Ethiopia withdrew — though some discussions later continued under the African Union.
Ethiopia formally inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, last fall. As Africa’s largest dam, it is located on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan and is meant to produce more than 5,000 megawatts, doubling Ethiopia’s electricity generation capacity.
Ethiopia sees the dam as a boon to its economy. But Egypt opposed its construction, arguing that it would reduce the country’s share of Nile River waters — which it almost entirely relies on for agriculture and to serve its more than 100 million people.
On Sept. 4, before the dam’s inauguration, Tamim Khallaf, spokesperson for the Egyptian foreign ministry, said Ethiopia built the dam “unilaterally without any prior notification, proper consultations, or consensus with downstream countries, thereby constituting a grave violation of international law and posing an existential threat.”
Trump posted on his social media site a letter he sent to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, saying: “I am ready to restart U.S. mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia to responsibly resolve the question of ‘The Nile Water Sharing’ once and for all.”
“My team and I understand the significance of the Nile River to Egypt and its people,” Trump wrote.
The president frequently boasts about ending eight wars around the world, though that claim is exaggerated. Egypt and Ethiopia are already on his list of wars he resolved, with Trump maintaining he stopped a conflict that might have led to fighting over issues that included the dam known as GERD.
Trump recently told Fox News that one of the ongoing conflicts that has continued despite his claiming to have stopped it — between Thailand and Cambodia — should actually count more than once.
“I did put out eight wars, eight and a quarter, because, you know, Thailand and Cambodia started going at it again,” he told Sean Hannity last week. The implication was a flare-up in the conflict made it an extra 1/4 of a war — something to watch for as he pushes mediation efforts again in Ethiopia and Egypt.
President Donald Trump speaks at a dedication ceremony for a portion of Southern Boulevard, which the Town of Palm Beach Council recently voted to rename,"President Donald J. Trump Boulevard," Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
OpenAI says it will soon start showing advertisements to ChatGPT users who aren't paying for a premium version of the chatbot.
The artificial intelligence company said Friday it hasn't yet rolled out ads but will start testing them in the coming weeks.
It's the latest effort by the San Francisco-based company to make money from ChatGPT's more than 800 million users, most of whom get it for free.
Though valued at $500 billion, the startup loses more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit.
“Most importantly: ads will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,” said Fidji Simo, the company’s CEO of applications, in a social media post Friday.
OpenAI said the digital ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's answers “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”
The ads “will be clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer,” the company said.
Two of OpenAI’s rivals, Google and Meta, have dominated digital advertising for years and already incorporate ads into some of their AI features.
Originally founded as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build better-than-human AI, OpenAI last year reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation. It said Friday that its pursuit of advertising will be “always in support” of its original mission to ensure its AI technology benefits humanity.
But introducing personalized ads starts OpenAI “down a risky path” previously taken by social media companies, said Miranda Bogen of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
“People are using chatbots for all sorts of reasons, including as companions and advisors," said Bogen, director of CDT’s AI Governance Lab. “There’s a lot at stake when that tool tries to exploit users’ trust to hawk advertisers’ goods.”
OpenAI makes some money from paid subscriptions but needs more revenue to pay for its more than $1 trillion in financial obligations for the computer chips and data centers that power its AI services. The risk that OpenAI won’t make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.
“It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don’t want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a post Friday on social platform X. He added that he likes the ads on Meta's Instagram because they show him things he wouldn't have found otherwise.
OpenAI claims it won't use a user's personal information or prompts to collect data for ads, but the question is “for how long,” said Paddy Harrington, an analyst at research group Forrester.
“Free services are never actually free and these public AI platforms need to generate revenue,” Harrington said. “Which leads to the adage: If the service is free, you’re the product.”
FILE - The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
