Leave it to OpenAI — the makers of one the most popular auto-writing engines on the planet — to release a new version of its software that exploded like a super-nova across the AI writing world in late Q4, 2022.
For the first half of December, there was no bigger story in the writing world than the dazzling capabilities of chatGPT.
In a phrase: OpenAI established a new, higher standard in AI writing with its release of chatGPT.
Even more stunning: The company appears to be readying itself to exceed even that standard sometime in 2023.
Meanwhile, other new key trends in AI writing emerging in Q4, 2022 that further underscored the tech’s growing influence, included:
*AI writing — and similar AI creation tools — have become the darling of venture capitalists
*Educators are worrying that AI writing’s increasing proliferation could spell the death of the high school and college essay
*AI now appears to have the ability — with a bit of tweaking — to write extremely sophisticated opinion pieces
Here’s a full rundown on the top ten articles that chronicled AI writing’s relentless rise in Q4, 2022:
*chatGPT: Next Generation AI Writing Arrives: While OpenAI has a knack for knocking the world on its keyster with its AI writing tech, it outdid itself with its release of chatGPT earlier this month.
The AI tech has the ability to auto-generate written responses of up to 500 words to virtually any question asked of it — in seconds.
Currently, many in the top echelons of the world’s news media — as well as countless other knowledge workers across dozens of industries — are gushing over chatGPT’s writing prowess.
And many in the news media and others have also been triggered once again by the fear: Will AI take my job away?
This piece offers an in-depth look at the impact of chatGPT on the writing world.
*AI Writing Now the ‘It’ App: A piece in The New York Times confirms that AI-generated writing — along with similar AI creation tools — is now the ‘it’ app.
The tools, which also go by the buzz-phrase ‘generative AI,’ are turning the heads of myriad Silicon luminaries, including Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google.
Observes writer Kevin Roose: “It’s been a banner year, in particular, for generative AI apps that turn text prompts into an image.
“DALL-E 2, the image generator that OpenAI released this spring, has more than 1.5 million users creating more than two million images every day, according to the company.
“Midjourney, another popular AI image generator released this year, has more than three million users in its official Discord server.
“That kind of growth has set off a feeding frenzy among investors hoping to get in early on the next big thing.”
*Perspective: Writers Ignore AI at Their Own Peril: AIthority warns that if you’re a writer who ignores AI writing tools, you’re signing you’re own death sentence.
Observes writer Ori Goshen: “AI won’t replace writers.
“But the writers who use AI will replace the writers who don’t.”
Goshen envisions a perfect world in which writers and AI tech will forever collaborate together in perfect harmony.
“As the machine learning tech develops, writers will be able to spend less time on the writing aspect of the process and more on deep thinking – honing their creativity and crafting unique perspectives.
“Writers with innovative ideas in content writing will be the ones who will benefit from this inevitable shift in the industry.
“And the world will benefit from their ideas — expressed with clarity and concision.”
As a man much wiser than me once said: “Wouldn’t it be lovely.”
*Leg Up: Snagging College Admission With An AI-Written Essay: Granted: It’s one thing to turn to AI to spit-out a college essay at three in the morning when the assignment’s due at sunrise.
But using AI to autowrite a college admissions essay — the one piece of writing upon which so many college careers have dangled for centuries?
Sad but true.
Reports The Jasper Whisperer:
“In a highly competitive environment, where college admissions and scholarship applications are becoming more and more difficult to navigate, many students are turning to AI-generated essays in order to give themselves an advantage.
“So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the college admissions process, don’t worry — Jasper AI has you covered.
“It’ll help you write a winning essay that will set you apart from the rest.”
As for academic integrity?
Apparently, that’s oh-so-2021.
*Good at AI Writing: Will Cheat for Cash: From the Department-of-It-Was-Only-A-Matter-of-Time: One student says she’s been using an AI autowriter to score straight A’s for herself — and paying customers.
Observes the AI-aided author, who goes by the moniker Urdadgirl69 on social media network Reddit:
“I have been using this tool for quite some time and only recently came up with the idea to use it to write essays, answer questions about movies and books for school projects, and much more.
“I feel a little guilty about it, but I don’t really care that much anymore.
“For a couple of weeks, I have made $100 profit by ‘doing’ homework for other classmates.
“Now I am looked at as a genius.”
*Next up: Auto-Written Op-Ed Pieces?: New research from Meta AI finds that AI is very good at creating convincing arguments and winning people over to its point-of-view — the very ingredients needed for any winning opinion piece you’d find in top newspapers.
Specifically, researchers were able to create a virtual player for Diplomacy — a highly sophisticated board game that requires participants to use arguments, cajoling, deal-making and all manner of other persuasion — to jockey for position during a time of war.
The result: The virtual player for Diplomacy “outperformed human players on average and placed in the top 10 percent of players who took part in multiple games,” according to Khushboo Gupta, a writer for MarkTechPost.
Adds Gupta: “To win the game, the agent must, like humans, be able to spot bluffing and communicate like a genuine person, develop relationships, and display empathy and game-related expertise.”
Granted, AI has already proved it can auto-generate satisfactory opinion pieces with the help of human editing.
But this new research elevates AI’s ability to change hearts-and-minds.
All that’s left is for a brilliant programmer to incorporate this new research into an AI writing app.
*Is Your Speech a Snore? — Treegoat Will Let You Know: If you’re looking for a great, passive/aggressive gift for the speech-maker in your life, Treegoat has the answer.
The company is prepping release of an AI tool that rates how interesting a speech is, sentence-by-sentence.
As far as what you’re up against in the rating system: Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech scored a .88 / 1.0 on the Treegoat scale.
For more detail, check-out Voicebot’s detailed, downloadable report on Treegoat.
*The Chatbot Will See You Now: Increasing numbers of mental health patients are seeking comfort and advice from chatbot therapists – with mixed results.
Teresa Berkowitz told Wired a therapy bot she uses has helped her by analyzing her journal writing and pointing-out negative thinking patterns.
But other robot-shrinks have been less-than-stellar.
A 12-year-old child who commiserated with an early version of Woebot about being forced to have sex, for example, was greeted with the cheery reply:
“Sorry you’re going through this.
“But it also shows me how much you care about connection and that’s really kind of beautiful.”
And Woebot offered-up this gem after researcher Estelle Smith typed-in she wanted to jump off a cliff:
“It’s so wonderful that you are taking care of both your mental and physical health.”
Observes John Torous, director, digital psychiatry, Israel Deaconess Medical Center: “We don’t want to be too cynical—we’re excited about innovation, we should celebrate that.
“But we certainly don’t want to celebrate too early.”
*Coming to a Newsroom Near You: AI-Generated Images: While hard news types tend to be leery of using fabricated images with news stories, some are apparently making an exception for text-to-art images.
That includes the BBC.
Observes Joe Whitwell, a product manager at BBC: “Anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows that finding good images is time-consuming.
“So, we use Extractive Summarisation here.”
The tool works by using keywords in an article as text prompts for the text-to-art generator — which in turn auto-produces a fabricated, supporting image that’s posted along with the news story.
Long-term, that could add graphic artists — especially those in low-funded, local news operations — to the list of news professionals who could see their jobs gobbled-up by AI.
*U.S. Intelligence Working on ‘Linguistic Fingerprinting’: Researchers with the U.S. government are working on a tool they hope they can ultimately use to identify the author of any document.
Moreover, they’re also designing the tool to be able to disguise a writer’s work by subtly changing the text.
Researchers are looking to use the tool to counter foreign influence activities, identify counterintelligence risks and protect authors whose work may endanger them, according to Brandon Vigliarolo, a writer for The Register.
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.