If you have been on Twitter in the last few days, you likely noticed a deluge of screenshots from a service called ChatGPT. From the OpenAI group, ChatGPT is a conversational tool that allows you to provide the system with prompts that it responds to in written format.
(You can make a free OpenAI account and give the service a shake yourself. Just don’t identify as a journalist during the onboarding process — you’ll get jammed up. Self-describe in a different manner and you can get right in.)
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TechCrunch has been busy covering OpenAI lately, with our own Darrell Etherington writing this morning about ChatGPT and how it is “quickly becoming apparent that how a user interfaces with generative models and systems is at least as important as the underlying training and inference technology.” We also have eyes on new generations of the well-known, and well-liked, GPT-3 AI writing tool.
That there is excitement among founders and venture investors in generative AI services like what OpenAI is building is well-known. Hell, it’s been a minute since Copy.AI showed that leveraging AI writing tools could build eight-figure ARR startups. Others are chasing similar magic, and the technology continues to improve. Hence all the screenshots.
Naturally, I had to see if I was in near-term employment trouble. So I ran a little test with the ChatGPT model this morning. The results are below.
First, a reminder that using computers to generate text is not new, and this is not the first time that I have stared down the barrel of a new tech tool that could, in theory, be coming for my job. Back in 2014, responding to news that the AP was planning on using some automated tech to report on corporate earnings, I wrote the following:
Source @TechCrunch