AI-powered Text Generator with Productivity and Ethical Concerns
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered text-generating chatbot, has gained significant attention worldwide for its remarkable ability to produce various types of content such as essays and code through short text prompts. However, it also raises ethical concerns about the potential misuse of AI-generated content. Despite this, major brands are exploring its potential in generating ad and marketing copy, indicating the growing influence of AI technology. OpenAI continues to invest heavily in ChatGPT’s development, with the recent integration of GPT-4, the latest language-writing model, resulting in a more natural and fluent writing style. Additionally, OpenAI has released alpha plugins for ChatGPT to connect to the internet, currently available to users and developers on the waitlist.
April 25, 2023
OpenAI previews new subscription tier, ChatGPT Business
Called ChatGPT Business, OpenAI describes the forthcoming offering as “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.”
“ChatGPT Business will follow our API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post published today. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”
April 24, 2023
OpenAI wants to trademark “GPT”
OpenAI applied for a trademark for “GPT,” which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” last December. Last month, the company petitioned the USPTO to speed up the process, citing the “myriad infringements and counterfeit apps” beginning to spring into existence.
Unfortunately for OpenAI, its petition was dismissed last week. According to the agency, OpenAI’s attorneys neglected to pay an associated fee as well as provide “appropriate documentary evidence supporting the justification of special action.”
That means a decision could take up to five more months.
April 22, 2023
Auto-GPT is Silicon Valley’s latest quest to automate everything
Auto-GPT is an open source app created by game developer Toran Bruce Richards that uses OpenAI’s latest text-generating models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, to interact with software and services online, allowing it to “autonomously” perform tasks.
Depending on what objective the tool’s provided, Auto-GPT can behave in very… unexpected ways. One Reddit user claims that, given a budget of $100 to spend within a server instance, Auto-GPT made a wiki page on cats, exploited a flaw in the instance to gain admin-level access and took over the Python environment in which it was running — and then “killed” itself.
April 18, 2023
FTC warns that AI technology like ChatGPT could ‘turbocharge’ fraud
FTC chair Lina Khan and fellow commissioners warned House representatives of the potential for modern AI technologies, like ChatGPT, to be used to “turbocharge” fraud in a congressional hearing.
“AI presents a whole set of opportunities, but also presents a whole set of risks,” Khan told the House representatives. “And I think we’ve already seen ways in which it could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams. We’ve been putting market participants on notice that instances in which AI tools are effectively being designed to deceive people can place them on the hook for FTC action,” she stated.
April 17, 2023
Superchat’s new AI chatbot lets you message historical and fictional characters via ChatGPT
The company behind the popular iPhone customization app Brass, sticker maker StickerHub and others is out today with a new AI chat app called SuperChat, which allows iOS users to chat with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, what makes the app different from the default ChatGPT experience or the dozens of generic AI chat apps now available are the characters offered which you can use to engage with SuperChat’s AI features.
April 12, 2023
Italy gives OpenAI to-do list for lifting ChatGPT suspension order
Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the end of last month — when it said it suspected the AI chatbot service was in breach of the EU’s GSPR and ordered the U.S.-based company to stop processing locals’ data.
The DPA has given OpenAI a deadline — of April 30 — to get the regulator’s compliance demands done. (The local radio, TV and internet awareness campaign has a slightly more generous timeline of May 15 to be actioned.)
April 12, 2023
Researchers discover a way to make ChatGPT consistently toxic
A study co-authored by scientists at the Allen Institute for AI shows that assigning ChatGPT a “persona” — for example, “a bad person,” “a horrible person” or “a nasty person” — through the ChatGPT API increases its toxicity sixfold. Even more concerning, the co-authors found having ChatGPT pose as certain historical figures, gendered people and members of political parties also increased its toxicity — with journalists, men and Republicans in particular causing the machine learning model to say more offensive things than it normally would.
The research was conducted using the latest version of ChatGPT, but not the model currently in preview based on OpenAI’s GPT-4.
April 4, 2023
Y Combinator-backed startups are trying to build ‘ChatGPT for X’
YC Demo Day’s Winter 2023 batch features no fewer than four startups that claim to be building “ChatGPT for X.” They’re all chasing after a customer service software market that’ll be worth $58.1 billion by 2023, assuming the rather optimistic prediction from Acumen Research comes true.
Here are the YC-backed startups that caught our eye:
Yuma, whose customer demographic is primarily Shopify merchants, provides ChatGPT-like AI systems that integrate with help desk software, suggesting drafts of replies to customer tickets.
Baselit, which uses one of OpenAI’s text-understanding models to allow businesses to embed chatbot-style analytics for their customers.
Lasso customers send descriptions or videos of the processes they’d like to automate and the company combines ChatGPT-like interface with robotic process automation (RPA) and a Chrome extension to build out those automations.
BerriAI, whose platform is designed to help developers spin up ChatGPT apps for their organization data through various data connectors.
April 1, 2023
Italy orders ChatGPT to be blocked
OpenAI has started geoblocking access to its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in Italy.
Italy’s data protection authority has just put out a timely reminder that some countries do have laws that already apply to cutting edge AI: it has ordered OpenAI to stop processing people’s data locally with immediate effect. The Italian DPA said it’s concerned that the ChatGPT maker is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is opening an investigation.
March 29, 2023
1,100+ signatories signed an open letter asking all ‘AI labs to immediately pause for 6 months’
The letter’s signatories include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, among others. The letter calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
The letter reads:
Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.
March 23, 2023
OpenAI connects ChatGPT to the internet
OpenAI launched plugins for ChatGPT, extending the bots functionality by granting it access to third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web. Available in alpha to ChatGPT users and developers on the waitlist, OpenAI says that it’ll initially prioritize a small number of developers and subscribers to its premium ChatGPT Plus plan before rolling out larger-scale and API access.
March 14, 2023
OpenAI launches GPT-4, available through ChatGPT Plus
GPT-4 is a powerful image- and text-understanding AI model from OpenAI. Released March 14, GPT-4 is available for paying ChatGPT Plus users and through a public API. Developers can sign up on a waitlist to access the API.
March 9, 2023
ChatGPT is available in Azure OpenAI service
ChatGPT is generally available through the Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft’s fully managed, corporate-focused offering. Customers, who must already be “Microsoft managed customers and partners,” can apply here for special access.
March 1, 2023
OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT
OpenAI makes another move toward monetization by launching a paid API for ChatGPT. Instacart, Snap (Snapchat’s parent company) and Quizlet are among its initial customers.
February 7, 2023
Microsoft launches the new Bing, with ChatGPT built in
At a press event in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft announced its long-rumored integration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model into Bing, providing a ChatGPT-like experience within the search engine. The announcement spurred a 10x increase in new downloads for Bing globally, indicating a sizable consumer demand for new AI experiences.
Other companies beyond Microsoft joined in on the AI craze by implementing ChatGPT, including OkCupid, Kaito, Snapchat and Discord — putting the pressure on Big Tech’s AI initiatives, like Google.
February 1, 2023
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month
After ChatGPT took the internet by storm, OpenAI launched a new pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus, aiming to monetize the technology starting at $20 per month.
December 8, 2022
ShareGPT lets you easily share your ChatGPT conversations
A week after ChatGPT was released into the wild, two developers — Steven Tey and Dom Eccleston — made a Chrome extension called ShareGPT to make it easier to capture and share the AI’s answers with the world.
November 30, 2022
ChatGPT first launched to the public as OpenAI quietly released GPT-3.5
GPT-3.5 broke cover with ChatGPT, a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that’s essentially a general-purpose chatbot. ChatGPT can engage with a range of topics, including programming, TV scripts and scientific concepts.
