- An updated version of OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, launched on November 30.
- Chatter about the new tech has extended beyond the business world, impressing and irritating users.
- While the tech’s long-term influence remains to be seen, people are finding creative ways to use it.
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It’s safe to say ChatGPT is causing chaos.
The AI chatbot from OpenAI has only been around for two months and has already amassed more than one million users.
Launched on November 30, the chatbot has impressed — and riled — many different people. Chatter about the new tech has stretched far beyond the business world and even managed to provoke the disdain of award-winning songwriter Nick Cave.
ChatGPT has already been compared with the launch of the iPhone and the crypto boom but while the tech’s long-term influence remains to be seen, people are already finding creative ways to use it.
From job-seekers, to rival tech companies, and academics, here are some of the people feeling the heat of ChatGPT.
‘Code-red’ for search engines
Heralded by some as a major threat to traditional search engines, OpenAI’s chatbot and Microsoft’s reported plans to invest $10 billion into it, following a $1 billion prior investment, appear to have unnerved Google.
In December, Google’s management issued a “code red” amid the launch of ChatGPT, per The New York Times. The outlet reported that the conversational chatbot sparked concerns over the future of Google’s search engine.
Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a Bing feature that incorporates the tech behind ChatGPT. The feature, which aims to provide users with answers to some searches rather than just displaying relevant links, could surface by the end of March, The Information reported.
AI experts, search experts, and current and former Google employees told Insider’s Tom Dotan that ChatGPT was unlikely to be a replacement for Google search at present because of concerns about its inaccurate responses.
Academic anxiety
ChatGPT can also write pretty good essays and pass some exams, capabilities that have set some academics on edge.
While some teachers are more positive about the development, viewing the tech as a tool to save time or an extension of more mainstream AI programs such as Grammarly, others are not so keen.
Two philosophy professors told Insider they’ve already caught students trying to pass off AI-generated content as their own. They say they’re worried the bot’s output will get harder to catch and that AI plagiarism is hard to prove within current academic rules.
A job-seeker’s best friend
Cover letters are almost universally hated by job-seekers. ChatGPT just might provide a way around the laborious task.
I asked ChatGPT to write my cover letters and sent them to hiring managers to see what they thought. I fed the bot some real job descriptions and a few brief sentences about my made-up experience to generate the letters.
The hiring managers were largely impressed and both said they’d most likely follow up with a screening call for at least one of the letters. They did say the letters lacked personality and suggested job-seekers use the chatbot as more of a jumping-off point.
Uninspired creatives
Award-winning songwriter and musician Nick Cave was unimpressed with ChatGPT. He called a ChatGPT song written in his style “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human” and dismissed it as “bullshit” in his newsletter.
Cave said he lacked enthusiasm for the new tech, calling the AI-generated song “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human.”
The musician is not the only creative to take issue with the new tech. Ammaar Reshi, a design manager at a fintech company, found himself in the middle of a heated debate about AI and the creative industries after he used ChatGPT, along with the AI art program Midjourney, to write and illustrate a children’s book.
Artists took to Twitter to accuse him of stealing their work while readers took aim at the quality of the story. “The writing is stiff and has no voice whatsoever,” one Amazon reviewer wrote.
