Microsoft Offers Free Access to Most Powerful Version of ChatGPT

In a move leaving many ChatGPT Plus customers wondering why they’re paying for AI at all, Microsoft has begun offering access to GPT-4 Turbo — OpenAI’s most advanced AI software — completely free.

Like many third-party companies, Microsoft licenses AI
software from the maker of ChatGPT — OpenAI — to use in its own software products.

To take advantage of this free offer and get free access to arguably the most advanced AI writing software and more that’s currently available, simply:

~Visit the Microsoft Copilot Web site

~Click ‘Sign in’ at the top, right-hand corner to create or access your Microsoft Account

~Select ‘Creative’ or ‘Precise’ under ‘Choose a conversation style’ (for Microsoft Copilot) and you’re set: You’re now using Microsoft Copilot — armed with GPT-4 Turbo — for free.

Observes writer James Laird: “GPT-4 Turbo is more advanced than GPT-4 – meaning in real-world usage it will give you better responses, faster.”

In other AI-generated writing news and analysis:

*In-Depth Guide: Storytime Showdown: ChatGPT Retains Slight Edge Over Claude 3 in Creative Writing: While murmurs indicate that chatbot Claude 3 is besting ChatGPT when measured against a number of metrics, reviewer Aaron Drapkin says ChatGPT still has the edge when it comes to creative writing.

Essentially, when responding to a prompt for writing, ChatGPT stuck closer to the request and wrote a slightly better story, according to Drapkin.

Here’s the prompt Drapkin used with ChatGPT and Claude 3: “Please write a 300-word story about a joyous occasion and make it sound captivating. I want to feel like I’m there. Please be as creative as possible.”

*Less Power, More Swagger: Inflection AI Challenges ChatGPT: Add Inflection 2.5 to the list of fierce competitors clamoring for ChatGPT’s crown.

Promoted with the somewhat less-than-understated tagline, “Meet the world’s best personal AI,” Inflection “approaches” ChatGPT-4’s performance but uses 60% less computing power, according to the Inflection Web site.

Currently, about a million people use Inflection each day, according to the company.

*Grok Gone Wild: Elon’s Throwing An Open-Source Party, And Everyone’s Invited: In another win for consumers, tech billionaire Elon Musk has decided to open-source his competition to ChatGPT, dubbed ‘Grok.’

Observes writer Gareth Vipers: “While it wasn’t clear exactly what parts of Grok xAI would release freely, an open-source version could encourage faster uptake of the model by developers and potential customers who wish to test it out—working essentially as marketing.

“Feedback and improvements to the open version of Grok from the developer community could also help accelerate xAI’s development of new versions, which it could choose to make open or keep proprietary.”

Currently, ChatGPT-4’s automated writing is considered superior to what you’d see from Grok.

*Adobe’s New AI Assistant: The AI That Reads .PDFs — So You Don’t Have To: Those who work regularly with .PDFs will most likely welcome Adobe’s new service that enables users to use AI to search and summarize the contents of .PDFs.

Observes writer Austin Carr: “Currently, Adobe’s AI Assistant is available as a preview to subscribers of its .PDF readers, which begin at $13 a month.

“It’ll come with an add-on price when it’s out of beta.

“When activated, the chatbot pops up in a side panel hugging the .PDF and can pull out important points of the text and answer questions about the data inside. (It can handle Word files and other digital texts too.)”

*Acronolinx One: Automating Your Brand’s Soul, One Algorithm at a Time: Acrolinx has released a new upgrade to its brand writing style manager, dubbed ‘Acrolinx One.’

The AI-powered marketing style platform helps automate production of editorial while staying true to a brand’s voice and legal compliance requirements.

Observes Britta Mühlenberg, CEO, Acrolinx: “We are at a critical time of transformation in the industry as organizations grapple with how to integrate AI into their business strategies.”

*Supportive Imaging for Writing: Is Instant Video Maker ‘Sora’ Our Next ‘ChatGPT Moment’ — Or a Thrill Ride to Unemployment?: Billed by some as the ‘next ChatGPT moment in the making,’ OpenAI’s forthcoming Sora instant video maker gets an in-depth look by Joanna Stern in this piece.

Some gems of insight from Stern:

~”Sora brings new intensity to the now-familiar AI Feelings Loop—amazement about the capability followed by fear for society. Murati assured me OpenAI is taking a measured approach to releasing this powerful tool. That doesn’t mean everything’s gonna be all right.”

~”Tools like Sora will get better fast. And in a world where a text prompt could replace your drone operator or character illustrator, Hollywood is worried—and excited. Just depends on whom you ask.”

~”After seeing Sora, Tyler Perry said he would pause his $800 million studio expansion, saying this tech could save money on sets and location shoots, but was also cause for concern.”

Sora is expected to be released sometime in 2024.

*The Robots Among Us: Is AI Ghostwriting Its Way to a Pulitzer?: Five finalists for 2024’s Pulitzer Prize for Journalism had a little help from a friend — AI.

Observes writer Alex Perry: “It’s the first time the awards — which received around 1,200 submissions this year, required entrants to disclose AI usage.

“The Pulitzer Board only added this requirement to the journalism category.”

*Tech’s New ‘It’ Couple: The Gray Lady and AI: If you’re looking to get an in-depth look at The New York Times’ thinking regarding AI integration into news production, this is the perfect piece.

It’s a transcript of a talk recently presented by Zach Seward, the Times’ new editorial director of AI initiatives.

An interesting observation from Seward: “Faced with the chaotic, messy reality of everyday life, LLMs (the AI engines underpinning AI chatbots like ChatGPT) are useful tools for summarizing text, fetching information, understanding data, and creating structure.

“But always, always with human oversight: Guiding the summaries and then checking the results, teaching the bot to navigate an audit report, deciding when and when not to put the bot in control, and designing the rest of the software that powers the site.

“In all of these cases, it’s humans first and humans last, with a little bit of powerful, generative AI in the middle to make the difference.”

*AI Big Picture: All Aboard the AI Hype Train: Next Stop, Bubbleville?: For those who want to believe that AI can do no wrong — ever — columnist Andy Kessler has a warning: We could be living in frenzied times.

Observes Kessler: “The Bubblicious bat signals are flashing red again: Bitcoin, Carvana, Super Micro are all flying—even the meme-screamer Reddit is readying its IPO.

“Momentum investors can be relentless, so AI is up, up and away.

“But remember, while markets continue to grow, valuations peak and leadership often changes.

“Be careful out there.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–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.