Just when you thought the saga of ChatGPT could not get any more enthralling, its maker threw us a curveball in Q4 by attempting to deep-six its charismatic CEO Sam Altman — and potentially relegate the world-famous tool to the ‘could-have-been-a-contender’ bin.
Fortunately, employing sleight-of-hand that would have made Houdini grin, Altman was able to swipe back his crown and keep ChatGPT on its steady course of continually delighting its users.
Equally good news for consumers: A story that broke just a few weeks later that a new alliance of 50+ heavy hitters from tech had been forged — including IBM, Oracle and Meta.
Its mission: Share AI research amongst all members so the computer genre can develop more rapidly — and feature applications from a wider array of players.
That play virtually guaranteed for AI writing users that some of the most brilliant minds in computing will be ferociously competing to bring us the absolute best in AI writing tools in months and years to come.
Meanwhile, Grammarly’s AI writer hit a major milestone by offering users the ability to teach it to write in their own writing style.
And Zoom clocked its own personal best, announcing it had auto-written a million text summaries of video meetings conducted on its service.
There were also a couple of black eyes: The CEO of Sports Illustrated was fired after fake bios and fake photos of fake writers showed-up on its pages — courtesy of AI.
And Google got its own shiner after it was revealed that its dramatic roll-out demo of Gemini — AI designed to compete with the AI software powering ChatGPT — was staged.
All-in-all, it was a pot-boiler of a financial quarter that left more than a few AI insiders at once startled, groping for steady ground and ultimately nostalgic for the days when the only thing setting the AI’s community’s hair-on-fire was a wunderkind called ChatGPT that could write in a seemingly magical way.
Here are the details on all of these stories — and more — that helped shape AI-generated writing in Q4, 2023:
*Consumers Win as ChatGPT Rights Ship: Avid users of ChatGPT scored a major victory last week as Sam Altman grabbed back his title of CEO of ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI.
The definitive end to OpenAI’s short-lived power struggle — which lasted five days and transfixed AI insiders the world over — virtually guarantees ChatGPT will continue on as one of the most successful software products in human history.
Gone are worries that a prolonged ‘game-of-thrones’ at OpenAI might have seriously impeded its healthy growth — as well as the steady announcements of ChatGPT upgrades and new features that avid ChatGPT users have come to expect.
Gone, too, are worries that without Altman, a new — and much more timid OpenAI CEO — may have decided to slow down the evolution of ChatGPT so considerably that the product would ultimately be crowned, ‘Could-have-been-a-contender.’
And gone are the worries that without Altman, the 95% of Open AI employees who threatened to quit unless Altman returned would have rendered the ChatGPT-maker a hollowed-out remnant of its former self.
Instead, Altman arrives back at OpenAI — in the eyes of many — a much stronger CEO.
*50+ Companies Align Against ChatGPT: More than 50 companies — including IBM, Facebook’s parent company Meta and Oracle — have formed a coalition against ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI.
Dubbed ‘The AI Alliance,’ the group — which also includes academic institutions — was formed to promote an open, voluntary sharing of AI research in an effort to move the tech forward in a cooperative way.
This approach differs markedly from generative AI market leader OpenAI — and similar competitors Anthropic and Cohere — which consider their research proprietary.
Observes writer Belle Lin: “The AI Alliance — whose members include Intel, Oracle, Cornell University and the National Science Foundation — said it is pooling resources to stand behind ‘open innovation and open science’ in AI.
“Its members largely support open source, an approach in which technology is shared free and draws on a history of collaboration among Big Tech, academics — and a fervent movement of independent programmers.”
*In-Depth Guide: ChatGPT Gets the Personal Touch: AI content specialist ‘Corrie Who Writes’ has another great video tutorial out — this time on how to make a custom version of ChatGPT.
As usual, Corrie offers an enthusiastic, step-by-step and easy-to-understand primer, showing users how to customize ChatGPT with ChatGPT’s new ‘GPT Builder.’
One surprise: GPT Builder offers you the option to be really thorough as you develop your custom version of ChatGPT.
The reason: It’s trained to ask a number of probing questions as you customize the AI tool.
One the greatest strengths of GPT Builder, according to Corrie: Its ability to build a custom version of ChatGPT that can auto-interconnect — and work with — scores of software applications across the Web.
Says Corrie: “So you can give the GPT (the custom version of ChatGPT you build) access to your emails, to your calendar, or your Notion account — or really any number of tools — and have it take actions on your behalf.”
Another great strength of GPT Builder: It can be trained to ingest a large, custom database that you upload — such as a number of articles, blog posts, papers and the like that you have authored — or have collated through personal research.
Observes Corrie on this spin-on-customization: “Instead of the bot tapping into its database of general knowledge, it’s tapping into the database of ‘you.’”
Bottom line: Corrie has a reputation for delivering extremely thoughtful, extremely inquisitive and extremely helpful video tutorials.
This one does not disappoint.
*The Ultimate Penalty Box: Sports Illustrated CEO Fired After Publishing AI Fakes: Ross Levinsohn has been fired as CEO of Sports Illustrated after publishing AI-generated articles that featured links to fake, AI-generated authors sporting fake headshots and fake biographies.
Observes writer Josh Taylor: “Among fake profiles uncovered by Futurism was that of purported author ‘Sora Tanaka,’ which claims she is a product reviewer.
“The page said: ‘Sora has always been a fitness guru and loves to try different foods and drinks.
“‘Ms. Tanaka is thrilled to bring her fitness and nutritional expertise to the Product Reviews Team and promises to bring you nothing but the best of the best.’
“Tanaka is not a real person.”
*Google’s Demo of New AI Was Staged: Turns-out that all the razzle-dazzle associated with Google’s recent release of its new AI software ‘Gemini’ was just that.
Writer Alex Blake reports much of Google’s ballyhooed video walk-through of Gemini was staged.
Observes Blake: “Google modified interactions with Gemini in numerous ways in order to create the demonstration.
“For instance, the video’s YouTube description explains that ‘for the purposes of this demo, latency has been reduced and Gemini outputs have been shortened for brevity.’
“In other words, it probably takes a lot longer for Gemini to respond to queries than the demo suggested.
“And even those queries have come under scrutiny.”
Plus, “It turns out that the demo wasn’t carried out in real-time,” Blake adds.
Bottom line: At this point, it’s anyone’s guess just how powerful Gemini really is — and whether or not Gemini will be able to best the AI of its primary competitor, ChatGPT.
*Grammarly’s New AI Learns Your Writing Style: More than 30 million Grammarly users can now use the AI editor/writer to mimic their writing style.
Granted, many other AI writers — including ChatGPT, Jasper and Anyword — also offer this feature.
But the capability with Grammarly reinforces the overall trend that in coming months, we’ll increasingly be seeing AI and its myriad impacts surfacing virtually everywhere in business software.
*In Bots We Trust: Zoom’s AI Companion Has Written a Million Meeting Summaries: Not satisfied with being one of the world’s most popular video meeting apps, Zoom also wants in on the AI craze.
Apparently, it’s well on its way.
Writer Joe O’Halloran reports Zoom’s ‘AI Companion’ tool has written a million summaries of meetings held on Zoom.
*Can I Get a Witness?: Security Camera Writes Descriptions of What It Sees: Psync Labs has added new meaning to 24/7 surveillance with a new camera that writes about what it sees.
Observes writer Daniel Cooper: “ViewSay, which currently costs 99-cents-a-month, promises to identify objects, sort events that triggered the recording in a visual timeline, let you search through the clips with text and, of course, the aforementioned written pings.
“Pay your fee, set this up and your phone will ping when it spots something interesting — and give you the best description of what is going on that it can manage.
“Users can also set specific categories, like ‘Person,’ ‘Vehicle,’ ‘Pet’ and will eventually be able to craft tailored alerts, like ‘a dog jumps on the couch.’”
*Schoolhouse Rock: ChatGPT-Maker Targets Education Sector: Amidst substantial grumblings from many educators that ChatGPT is being used by students to cheat on homework and writing assignments, OpenAI is still pursuing the education market.
Observes Mint: “OpenAI’s chief operating officer Brad Lightcap revealed at the INSEAD Americas Conference in San Francisco that the company was forming a dedicated team to explore educational applications for ChatGPT.”
While embraced by some educators, ChatGPT has left others wary — including 25% of teachers responding to a new survey who say they’ve caught their students cheating with ChatGPT.
*AI Everywhere — No Kidding: Responding to a new hunger for AI, some of the biggest titans in software — including Microsoft, Google and Salesforce — are coming out with new versions of their software suites that will be completely reworked by AI.
The move has been triggered by the staggering popularity of ChatGPT, the wunderkind AI chatbot from OpenAI.
As many know, the bot has stunned the world with its ability to auto-generate clear, concise, intelligent prose in response to virtually any question posed to it.
Moreover, given that ChatGPT is operated via written or spoken word, writers are uniquely positioned to reap maximum utilization of the coming AI changes from Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others.
The reason: The better you are at writing or spoken word, the more artfully you’ll be able to manipulate the new AI-powered tools — given that optimal performance of the AI hinges on how well you use language.
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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.