Microsoft's carbon emissions grow by 25 percent last year, a new ChatGPT tool for all things work related, and Playdate is helping Big Ben ring on time

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Microsoft's AI Drive saw its carbon emissions grow by 25% last year.
OpenAI released a new ChatGPT tool for all things work-related. And Playdate is helping Big Ben ring on time.
It's Friday, July 10th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.
Microsoft's carbon emissions grew 25% year over year in 2025 That's according to the company's own 2026 Environmental Sustainability Report. The report covers the company's 2025 fiscal year, and it measures its progress against its 2020 baseline. Microsoft says this growth in emissions is mostly caused by the expansion of its investments in AI data center infrastructure. As GeekWire noted, Microsoft seems to be moving in the opposite direction of where it wants to go in order to achieve its goal. You see, the company announced back in 2020 that it planned to be carbon negative or to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it creates by 2030 It only has four more years to get there. The company admitted that while AI infrastructure is driving demand for energy, water, land and materials, sustainability solutions are not scaling fast enough to meet demand. The company knows it has to refine its strategies as conditions change, data improves and trade-offs become clearer. Microsoft says it's not lowering its ambitions because AI demands are outpacing sustainability solutions, in which case the company has a lot of work ahead of it. In addition to AI infrastructure build-outs, another reason why Microsoft reported a 25% year-on-year growth in carbon emissions is because it stopped buying unbundled renewable energy certificates. One certificate signifies that an entity owns 1 MWh of zero carbon electricity generated by a renewable source and delivered to the grid. Microsoft says its decision increased its reported emissions in the near term, but it enables the company to focus on adding all forms of carbon-free electricity to the grids where it operates rather than just on relying on certificates. While it admits to emitting more carbon in its report, Microsoft also highlighted its successes for the fiscal year of 2025 It says it matched 100% of its annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy. The company also replenished more water than it withdrew globally, which pushes the company closer towards achieving its goal to become water-positive by 2030
Since the start of March, OpenAI has been publicly working on a desktop super app designed to bring together ChatGPT, its Codex coding agent, and Atlas web browser under one roof. In April, the company began laying the groundwork for that project, and now it's taking its biggest step toward realizing that vision with the release of ChatGPT Work. OpenAI describes its latest offering as something of a general-purpose productivity agent. Where Codex was designed primarily for coding projects, OpenAI says Work is here to help people with some of their most ambitious tasks. To that end, ChatGPT Work integrates nearly every major technology company has been working on in recent months. Now, to start, it's powered by OpenAI's new family of GPT 5.6 models, the release of which was temporarily delayed by the Trump administration. Most people will access ChatGPT Work through the redesigned ChatGPT app, where you can now find ChatGPT, the new agent and Codex all in one place. Building on the mobile integration OpenAI released in May for Codex, ChatGPT Work includes support for task scheduling, meaning that you can tell the agent to start working on something from your phone, and it will chip away at the assignment remotely. After you return to your desk, you can then track its progress through either your web browser or the ChatGPT desktop app. Through the desktop app, ChatGPT Work can take advantage of its built-in computer use capabilities to carry out tasks across your apps and web browser, allowing the agents to move files if needed. A new unified plugin directory allows you to connect ChatGPT to your favorite apps and tools. The chatbot will also recommend relevant apps during your conversations. As part of that integration, OpenAI notes that you can also use task scheduling to automate busy work. For example, the company suggests that ChatGPT can review your Slack updates and generate a summary of all the messages you got during the week. As part of this week's announcement, the company says it plans to discontinue Atlas with August 9th as the target for deprecation.