So, what is it?

ChatGPT is an Artificial intelligence chatbot that allows you to ask a question and in return, it will provide you with a natural-language response. Freaky right? It can even write poems. GPT stands for ‘Generative Pre-training Transformer’ which is the way that the bot learns information and can respond in a human-like sentence or paragraph. ChatGPT is built on a closed database – meaning that it is not updated with new information and doesn’t hold information past 2021. The program was created by the company OpenAI – a San Francisco-based start-up established in 2015. Individuals such as Elon Musk have invested billions into the chatbot, and it seems to be paying off.

Since ChatGPT’s arrival in late November, it has attracted a huge number of users. Smashing Instagram’s number of 1 million visitors in 2 and a half months, which the chatbot reached in under 1 week (Mi3 2023), and since then, it has only continued to grow.

Google ‘Code Red’

With Microsoft being an investor in OpenAI’s development since 2019, they continue to support and are investing a further $10 billion into the chatbot function. With this we are expected to see Microsoft incorporate the function into Bing, changing the search engine game from this point forward.

As a potential threat to the top dogs, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has announced the arrival of ‘Bard’; a competing AI service that will “capture the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models” (Sundar Pichai, CEO 2023). The announcement came following Google’s ‘Code Red’ (Forbes 2023).‘Bard’ has already been released to trusted users, and within the coming weeks it will be released to the public (Google 2023).

‘Bard’ promised accuracy, however, news came on Thursday 09 February 2023 that Alphabet INC (Google’s parent company) has lost over $100 billion in market value after NASA confirmed that information shared in the chatbot’s promotional video was factually incorrect.

The good and the bad

Due to the easy access to the platform, it is understandable that things can go wrong. With false information being spread from the chatbot as well as its ability to write essays, the education systems will need to create a strict structure around the usage of AI. A lot of places have already gone as far as to block the system, however, that won’t fix the problem forever. Another issue to note is that if the question has too many factors the program also could get overwhelmed in its response leaving prompts unanswered.

However, ChatGPT offers many services such as assisting with web code, brainstorming marketing content ideas, and more, allowing for ease of creative blocks and assisting with general repetitive tasks (Forbes 2022). Using the server at an optimised rate for your business could allow for great usage of time, and training to overall boost the efficiency of mundane tasks. Furthermore, another potentially successful route for the system would be to implement ChatGPT into digital customer service, that way it can answer any question a person may have even when business hours end.

What’s the takeaway? 

ChatGPT isn’t something to be afraid of, but it is here to stay and it’s shaping the way we reimagine something as untouchable as search engines. There is a lot of work to be done, however, it’s time to get familiar with and take full advantage of what could be our new normal. Technology is never perfect, and in its early stages, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already achieved a great response, in time we can only imagine it to be a fully functioning tool used within many features of our life. Watch this space for more updates to come…

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash