Image courtesy of OpenAI
There is only one thing everyone in tech has been excitedly talking about over the last few weeks and, no, it is not Elon Musk and Twitter.
That thing is artificial intelligence.
At first all the buzz centred around a tool called DALL·E 2, which is an tool by OpenAI that can create realistic images and art from a description written in everyday language.
Type in ‘an astronaut riding a horse in a photorealistic style’ and a selection of images will be created in a few seconds showing exactly that. It feels a little like magic.
And although the results are often far from perfect at first, they can be radically improved by refining the description of what you want to see.
It is not hard to see why many think this will soon be one of the main ways images are created for everyday commercial use. Who needs an image stock library when you can create anything you want just by describing it?
And it does not stop at static images. Already animated and video footage is being created by AI.
Over the last few days attention has turned to another OpenAI tool, called ChatGPT, which can generate coherent responses to conversational prompts.
Give it a task and it will produce an articulate response that often sounds informed and credible.
Already people are finding uses for the tool, from essay writing to SEO copy for websites. Who needs writers, journalists and teachers if machines can do it all for us?
It is easy to get carried away. All these tools are essentially just using large sets of data to find patterns and then regurgitating that to form a result that looks “right.”
But sometimes that will be good enough. And as the tools become ever more sophisticated, good enough will get better and better.
I set ChatGPT a task: write a paragraph explaining the advantages and disadvantages of AI for writing content.
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a great tool for writing content,” it wrote. “AI can be used to quickly generate content that is grammatically correct, which could save time and money compared to hiring writers. Additionally, AI can be used to quickly analyse data for content and can make the data easier to understand. On the other hand, AI content can lack the personal touch and depth that comes from a human writer, and the content may not be as engaging.”
That sounds about right.
