The AI bot and the threat to industry

The particular focus of this article is ChatGPT. This is an AI-powered chatbot that is capable of producing intelligent, well-researched and referenced responses to user prompts. The question, then, is how does this technology affect industries moving forwards?

Developed by OpenAI in California, ChatGPT is built on top of a ‘large language model’, essentially a type of AI that trawls through huge amounts of data learning how words and phrases are used. Combined with the ability to interpret prompts, it clearly has the ability to respond with lucid, intelligent-sounding texts.

The implications are far-reaching. Education has been cited by many, with essay writing just one area which could be severely impacted by the capabilities of tech such as ChatGPT. Elsewhere, though, could human creativity be under threat?

This is of course the area that many in the past had assumed to be the hardest for AI to replicate, let alone surpass. The quality and speed of ChatGPT raises serious questions for professions such as content and script writers, musicians and songwriters, novelists and more.

Of course, there are ways in which the patterns of AI-based writing can be detected. The lines are becoming more blurred, though. Could we be facing a realistic future whereby books are sold with labels indicating whether or not they have been ‘human written’? Could future pop stars be singing songs that were entirely written by AI? If so, who owns the rights to that music?

Of course, this is just the latest in a number of innovations that are testing the foundations of many industries. AI tech that creates images from fairly simple prompts (see Prompt Hunt or Stable Diffusion, for example) could very easily impact photography and stock imagery resources. Its ability to respond to requests to create logos could soon be replacing the work of graphic designers, too. This tech doesn’t feel particularly old. Where will we be 10 years from now, for example? 

As is often the case, those who see opportunity in challenges succeed. This sort of technology has many practical applications today. From summarizing legal documentation to supporting computer programmers, it is demonstrating real-world applications that are helping people with their work. As such, there is excitement about what else might be achieved through the deployment of this sort of artificial intelligence.

It has some of the big names rethinking their approach, too. Recently it was announced that Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc has reshuffled some of its working groups to meet the perceived threat of ChatGPT. The apparent issue is whether or not Google’s core product (search) could be displaced by precisely this kind of AI.

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