Pollinger’s Productivity : February 2026
| ChatGPT Health Launches |
| In January, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space within ChatGPT designed specifically for health and wellness conversations. Users can securely connect medical records, Apple Health, and supported wellness apps so that ChatGPT can provide answers grounded in their personal health data. |
| Health conversations, memory, and files are kept completely separate from the rest of ChatGPT and are not used to train foundation models. The feature is currently in early access for a small group, available on web and iOS, with Android coming soon. |
| Insights: This is a significant move into a sensitive vertical. By keeping health data separate and encrypted, OpenAI is demonstrating that AI can handle personal information responsibly. ChatGPT Health won’t replace medical professionals, but it can help users navigate healthcare, understand their conditions better, and make more informed decisions. If this proves successful, expect more industry-specific AI experiences from all the major players. |
| ChatGPT Go Launches Globally |
| Last month, OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT Go worldwide – a new low-cost subscription tier that offers expanded access to GPT-5.2 Instant, higher usage limits, and longer memory. This positions ChatGPT as more accessible to users who want enhanced features without paying for the Plus plan (which costs approx £20/month). In the UK ChatGPT will cost approximately £8 per month. View full ChatGPT pricing and plans. |
| Insights: This is smart pricing strategy. By creating a low-tier option, OpenAI captures users who find the free version limiting but aren’t ready for the Plus tier. It also puts competitive pressure on other AI providers to revisit their pricing. For everyday users, ChatGPT Go could be the sweet spot between capability and cost. For small businesses, I’d recommend ChatGPT Business as this has access to your organisation’s information, just like Copilot. |
| Ads Coming to ChatGPT |
| On 16 January, OpenAI announced it will begin testing advertisements in ChatGPT’s free tier and the new ChatGPT Go subscription (see above). The ads will appear at the bottom of chat responses, clearly labeled and visually separated from the AI-generated content. Importantly, ads will not influence ChatGPT’s answers – responses remain optimised for what’s most helpful to you, not what advertisers want you to see. OpenAI has built in several protections: conversations will not be shared with advertisers, user data will never be sold, ads won’t be shown to users under 18, and ads will be excluded from sensitive topics like politics, health, and mental health. Users will be able to learn why they’re seeing an ad, dismiss ads they find irrelevant, and turn off ad personalisation if they prefer. Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will remain completely ad-free. |
| Insights: This move is about economics. OpenAI reportedly lost $8 billion in the first half of 2025, and with only 5% of ChatGPT’s 800 million users paying for subscriptions, ads provide a path to sustainability without forcing everyone onto paid plans. The approach feels thoughtful – ads that are clearly labeled, separated from answers, and excluded from sensitive topics show OpenAI is trying to balance monetisation with user trust. For small businesses, this signals the arrival of conversational AI as an advertising channel – quite different from traditional search ads, as ChatGPT ads will appear during active research and decision-making moments. They could be an attractive investment depending on pricing. |
| Improved Memory and Voice Updates in ChatGPT |
| ChatGPT Plus and Pro users received a major memory upgrade in January. When reference chat history is enabled (Settings/Personalisation), ChatGPT can now reliably find specific details from past conversations. Any past chat used to answer your question appears as a source, so you can review the original context. Voice also got better for paid users, with improvements to instruction-following and a fix for a bug where Voice would sometimes repeat custom instructions. GPT-5.2 Instant’s default personality was also updated to be more conversational and better at adapting its tone contextually. |
| Insights: These may seem like incremental improvements, but they make ChatGPT feel genuinely smarter and more useful. Being able to reference past conversations moves ChatGPT from a stateless chatbot into something closer to a persistent AI assistant that remembers your work. Voice improvements continue the trend of making AI interaction more natural and less friction-filled. |
| New Copilot in PowerPoint Features |
| There’s a new “Create New Slide with Copilot” feature on the main menu bar. Plus, after you’ve provided a prompt and Copilot has generated a slide outline, you’re presented with a choice of Presentation Styles to apply across your deck. You can also decide whether images should be AI-generated or pulled from stock libraries. If you choose AI generation, you can specify the style, such as photorealistic, giving you control over the visual tone of your entire presentation. |
| Insights: Some modest and handy changes but Copilot in PowerPoint is miles behind Gamma which many people use to create and update slide decks every day. |
| Search with Copilot in Outlook |
| Another new feature spotted recently is the new “Search with Copilot” button in Outlook. Rather than using regular keyword search, you can ask Copilot to find emails using natural language. For example, “Find emails from suppliers about the Q1 project” or “Show me unread messages about budget approvals.” You could always do this but the dedicated button makes it much more convenient than switching to Copilot Chat, and it’s a marked improvement over Outlook’s traditional search. |
| Insights: This is the kind of small but meaningful UI change that makes AI feel integrated rather than bolted on. Email search has always been frustrating – you remember the context but not the exact keywords – and Copilot’s natural language understanding makes finding the right message genuinely easier. If you’re drowning in email, this one’s worth trying. |
| New Copilot Search Icon with Improved Page |
| There’s a new handy Search icon (magnifying glass) to the right of the Chats heading. On selecting a Search page by date appears – handy for browsing or use Search to find and read previous Copilot chats. You can also filter to find Chats where Researcher and Agents have been used. |
| Insights: If you use Copilot regularly, this will make it easier to find past chats. any people have struggled to find the search within the Conversations menu. |
| New Copilot Notebooks Features |
| Three changes make Copilot Notebooks more useful for real work. First, Suggested references helps you add relevant files and notes faster, by surfacing items you have been working on recently, instead of you hunting through OneDrive, emails, and chats. Second, the new Summary and insights landing page gives you an at-a-glance view of what the notebook contains, designed to help you quickly understand the references you have gathered. Thirdly, a new Study Guide adds a learning-friendly option, generating a multi-page study companion from your notebook materials, with a Summary page by default and optional topic pages, flashcards, and a quiz.. Note that these features only seem to be available when you create a new Notebook and not on existing ones. |
| Insights: Suggested references is mainly a speed win and a relevance win, it helps you start with the right docs sooner, which usually leads to better outputs because the notebook has stronger grounding. The Summary and insights page is simply handy, it gives you a quick “what’s in here?” moment before you commit to using the Notebook for decisions or client-facing content. Study Guide is an interesting addition – it could be a neat way to turn a messy pile of notes and documents into a structured refresher, useful for course prep, onboarding, and anyone who needs to get up to speed quickly without reading everything end to end. The inclusion of flashcards makes it nicely engaging and interactive. |
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