Bare Minimum With a Side of Bland?
Apparently, editors and writers looking to be dazzled by the new AI writing and editing tools promised for the iPhone and other Apple devices this week will probably end-up non-plussed.
Observes Joanna Stern, a writer for the Wall Street Journal: “If you’re expecting AI fireworks, prepare for AI — sparklers.
“Apple’s Writing Tools are the convenient drive-through right on the highway.
“OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the better restaurant a few miles off your route.”
The overarching problem with Apple’s decision to unleash AI writing tools that are seriously inferior to the state-of-the art: Millions of gas-lit customers.
Specifically: The penetration of Apple devices across the globe right now is 2.2 billion.
While users of older Apple devices will not be eligible for the Apple Intelligence upgrade, millions of others will be.
And each one of those millions who try-out the Apple Intelligence upgrade will be snookered.
They’ll walk away with the belief that the seriously inferior AI writing tools onboard are the best AI can do right now.
Talk about a missed opportunity.
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*In-Depth Guide: Under-the-Hood of Microsoft’s New AI Agents: Microsoft has released a highly detailed look at how its new AI agents actually work in this video.
Trumpeted by many as the next step in AI’s evolution, AI agents — which you can build using everyday language — are promising to automate countless everyday tasks.
This video, for example, offers a close-up on how an AI agent can be built to automate ongoing communications with a customer.
But the concepts leveraged by the showcased AI agent could just as easily be applied by a journalist looking to automate ongoing communications with a source, for example.
Or, the agent could also be tweaked to become a virtual journalist to venture out onto the Web to seek-out and cultivate new sources.
Observes Jared Spataro, a marketing officer at Microsoft: Agents “are the new apps for an AI-powered world. Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous.
“They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate a business’ processes.
“Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents.
“And they’ll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.”
*Zoom’s New AI Writing and Research Tools: De-Jumbling Your Thoughts: Video-meeting king Zoom is out with an upgrade of its onboard AI, dubbed AI Companion 2.0.
The upgrade includes new polish on AI writing tools that can auto-generate text, help with editing and auto-generate summaries.
Plus, enhanced research capabilities include the ability to ask questions of documents and similar data that you upload to Zoom.
*Grammarly’s New ROI Tools: For Writing That Needs a Score: AI evangelists looking to sell their companies on AI writing and editing now have new return-on-investment tools from Grammarly.
A pioneer in AI editing and writing, Grammarly now features an ‘ROI Report’ that measures how use of Grammarly helps a business deliver on key performance indicators.
Also new is an ‘Effective Communication Score,’ which can be used to evaluate how businesses are upping-their-game using Grammarly when it comes to producing quality text.
*Robo-Written Police Reports?: What Could Go Wrong?: Add the prosecuting attorney for Seattle, Washington to the growing list of legal entities saying ‘not so fast’ to the idea of police reports auto-written by AI.
Observes Matthew Guariglia, a writer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “This is a good development. We hope prosecutors across the country will exercise such caution as companies continue to peddle technology – generative artificial intelligence to help write police reports – that could harm people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.”
One of the EFF’s primary beefs with AI-generated police reports: “While an officer is required to edit the narrative and assert under penalty of perjury that it is accurate, some of the GenAI errors are so small that they will be missed in review,” according to Guariglia.
*Microsoft’s Upgraded AI Assistant: Falling Short — But That’s Apparently on You: The latest retread of MS Copilot — a direct competitor to ChatGPT — has left many users disenchanted.
Observes writer Kevin Okemwa: “Interestingly, Microsoft insiders revealed that the top complaint about Copilot is that it does not work as well as ChatGPT.
“Microsoft has countered this feedback by claiming users aren’t leveraging Copilot’s capabilities as intended — hence the disparity.”
*Using ChatGPT on Windows Just Got Easier: ChatGPT now has a Windows app you can download to the desktop of your computerized device that makes ChatGPT access a snap.
Simply click ‘Alt + Space’ on your keyboard once the app is downloaded and ChatGPT will instantly appear on your screen.
A similar app also exists for Mac computerized devices.
*Where AI Goes for Street Cred: The Never-Ending Chatbot Shootout: Open-source AI promulgator Hugging Face has given its free AI chatbot rating service a new facelift.
Essentially: You can click here to see how ChatGPT is faring against its many rivals.
One caveat: Users contributing to the rating service use their own, subjective criteria when deciding how a chatbot stacks-up against competitors.
So some reviewers, for example, may rate a chatbot at how well it renders computer code — rather than how well it auto-writes.
*The Top Ten Gladiators of Grammar: Participle, Ye Shall Dangle No More!: The London Daily News has come out with its list of the top AI tools in grammar checking.
Many commonly recommended offerings made the list.
Dark horses include LanguageTool and Scribens.
*AI Big Picture: State of AI Report 2024: AI investor Nathan Benaich and Air Street Capital have released their seventh annual take on AI.
Some key takeaways:
~ChatGPT’s maker may have a tougher time staying well ahead of the pack in coming years
~China’s AI labs are feeling the sting of U.S. sanctions designed to slow-down AI development in that country
~The combined value of AI companies has hit $9 trillion
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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.