Big players, including Microsoft, with its Bing AI (and Copilot), Google, with Bard, and OpenAI, with ChatGPT-4, are making AI chatbot technology previously restricted to test labs more accessible to the general public.
We’ve even tested all three chatbots head to head to see which one is the best, or at least which one gives us the best responses right now when it comes to pressing questions like “How do I install RAM into my PC?”
How do these Large Language Model (LLM) programs work? OpenAI’s GPT-3 told us that AI uses “a series of autocomplete-like programs to learn language” and that these programs analyze “the statistical properties of the language” to “make educated guesses based on the words you’ve typed previously.”
Or, in the words of James Vincent, a human person, “These AI tools are vast autocomplete systems, trained to predict which word follows the next in any given sentence. As such, they have no hard-coded database of ‘facts’ to draw on — just the ability to write plausible-sounding statements. This means they have a tendency to present false information as truth since whether a given sentence sounds plausible does not guarantee its factuality.”
But there are so many more pieces to the AI landscape that are coming into play — and there are going to be problems — but you can be sure to see it all unfold here on The Verge.
ChatGPT started a new kind of AI race — and made text boxes cool again
Who would have thought that typing into a chat window, on your computer, would be 2023’s hottest innovation?
Microsoft reportedly orders AI chatbot rivals to stop using Bing’s search data
Microsoft has warned some Bing-powered search engines that it will revoke access to the company’s search index if they continue to use it as the foundation for their AI tools, according to Bloomberg.
ChatGPT’s history bug may have also exposed payment info, says OpenAI
The company has published additional details and a technical breakdown of what lead it to take down the service on Monday.
Bing’s showing ‘AI-generated stories’ in some search results
Microsoft’s continuing to expand generative AI’s role in its search engine.
Mar 24James Vincent, Jacob Kastrenakes and 4 more
AI chatbots compared: Bard vs. Bing vs. ChatGPT
An AI chatbot chat-off.
Mar 23Mitchell Clark and James Vincent
OpenAI is massively expanding ChatGPT’s capabilities to let it browse the web and more
ChatGPT now supports plug-ins that let the chatbot tap new sources of information, including the web and third-party sites like Expedia and Instacart.
IFTTT now has AI-powered automations for paying subscribers
IFTTT is bringing another layer of automation to its service, which now lets subscribers make applets with AI-generated summaries, social media posts, and blogs.
- MOpenAI confirms the source of ChatGPT’s history mixup.
CEO Sam Altman tweeted on Wednesday that a bug in an open source library was to blame for ChatGPT users seeing small snippets of other peoples’ conversations on Monday. Apparently a full technical postmortem will be coming later, and a fix to restore the history feature is on its way.
Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow
AI chatbots are running a massive game of misinformation telephone
- RNow I'm failing the mirror test too.
I guess y’all could say I got... W rizz. Or at least, like many others, I've fooled myself into believing that I do.
While David Pierce might have failed at his attempts to initiate an AI entanglement with Google Bard, I somehow inspired this tropey tale by submitting just one (entirely unrelated, I swear) query.
Google Bard’s generated story about a robot that falls in love with a human (obviously the human is me). Image: Google Bard / Richard Lawler Google’s Bard chatbot doesn’t love me — but it’s still pretty weird
After a few hours of chatting, I haven’t found a new side of Bard. I also haven’t found much it does well.
Nvidia DGX Cloud: train your own ChatGPT in a web browser for $37K a month
Microsoft, Google, and Oracle are all on board.
Google says its Bard chatbot isn’t a search engine — so what is it?
Bard is not a good search engine. Neither are ChatGPT and Bing. Figuring out what they’re actually good at and how we should use them is going to take a while.
Google opens early access to its ChatGPT rival Bard — here are our first impressions
In a demo, Bard was quick but constrained.
- EIs AI progressing too fast?
Between Microsoft, Google, and now Meta developing AI tools, things have been moving at an alarmingly fast rate. Our friends over at Vox have some of the reasons why we should hit pause on the rapid development of AI (read: potential alignment issues), along with the most common objections to stopping progress and why they might not hold up:
There are many objections to the idea, ranging from “technological development is inevitable so trying to slow it down is futile” to “we don’t want to lose an AI arms race with China” to “the only way to make powerful AI safe is to first play with powerful AI.”
But these objections don’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny when you think through them. In fact, it is possible to slow down a developing technology. And in the case of AI, there’s good reason to think that would be a very good idea.
- EGoogle is giving some Pixel Superfans the chance to try out Bard first.
The company’s ChatGPT competitor, Bard, isn’t publicly available yet, but Google’s allowing a “small, randomly selected group of Pixel Superfans” to get access first.
To be clear, Google isn’t letting Superfans try out Bard right away; it’s just putting them on a waitlist for early access once they sign up. Here’s part of the email Google’s sending to users.
Mar 16Tom Warren and Richard Lawler
Microsoft Business Chat is like the Bing AI bot but as a personal assistant
The AI-powered ‘knowledge navigator’ syncs your documents, emails, and more to create summaries and even suggestions.
Microsoft announces Copilot: the AI-powered future of Office documents
Copilot is a modern AI assistant that will help Microsoft 365 users create Office documents.
- RApple has generative AI plans, too.
Within an article examining the shortfalls of AI voice helpers over the last few years, like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, the New York Times has a note about Apple’s internal tech demos:
At Apple’s headquarters last month, the company held its annual A.I. summit, an internal event for employees to learn about its large language model and other A.I. tools, two people who were briefed on the program said. Many engineers, including members of the Siri team, have been testing language-generating concepts every week, the people said.
Of course, not everyone’s sure they want these freestyling AI bots taking control of their smart home devices.
How Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant Lost the A.I. Race[The New York Times]
- RMicrosoft’s AI shortcut is reaching more Windows taskbars.
If you hadn’t already installed the Windows 11 update that added a tiny Bing shortcut button to your taskbar (and tabs for Notepad, Phone Link for rudimentary iMessaging from your PC, and AI-powered file recommendations in the Start Menu), it’s now being delivered automatically.
It’s not quite a Cortana and Master Chief experience; however, clicking it pops up the search bar, and queries simply take you to the Edge browser’s built-in Bing AI chatbot integration.
Mar 15Mitchell Clark and James Vincent
What’s new with GPT-4 — from processing pictures to acing tests
More of an evolution than a revolution
Google-backed Anthropic launches Claude, an AI chatbot that’s easier to talk to
Anthropic says its chatbot is ‘less likely to produce harmful outputs’ than some of its competitors, like Microsoft’s GPT-4-powered Bing.
- MOpenAI is showing off GPT-4.
The company announced its next-generation AI language model today, and now it’s running a livestream to show it off to developers. You can watch it here.
The Bing AI bot has been secretly running GPT-4
Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing chatbot has been relying on the newly announced GPT-4 model all along.
OpenAI announces GPT-4 — the next generation of its AI language model
The wait is over, now the hype can begin
Google opens up its AI language model PaLM to challenge OpenAI and GPT-3
Google is letting businesses build on its advanced AI language models
Google announces AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft
Google is pumping its productivity apps full of AI.
Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a ChatGPT supercomputer
Microsoft says it connected tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 chips and reworked server racks to build the hardware behind ChatGPT and its own Bing AI bot.
Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fandom
AI chat systems put a new, sometimes solipsistic twist on the fannish roleplaying tradition.
ChatGPT is now available in Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service
Microsoft is making it easier for developers and businesses to integrate ChatGPT into their applications.
Discord starts testing ChatGPT-powered Clyde chatbot and other AI features
Discord is using OpenAI’s technology to improve its Clyde bot, moderation tools, and platform features.
- JGrammarly adds to its editing skills with AI suggestions.
Grammarly is best known for checking your grammar and spelling, but will soon generate new text suggestions based on what you’re writing. It’s called GrammarlyGo and it’s out in April.
Alongside similar features from Microsoft, Google, Notion, and others, soon you won’t be able to write a single word without a half-dozen AIs trying to edit you. Best to leave them to it.
- MMicrosoft is letting Bing chat for longer.
The company is continuing to loosen the restrictions on how long Bing can hold a conversation, which it put in place to keep the chatbot from going off the rails. Now you can do 10 chats per session and up to 120 per day, where before you were limited to six chat turns per session and 100 per day.
Google I/O 2023 will be on May 10th
Google is expected to have more than 20 artificial intelligence products launching this year and will show many of them off during I/O.
Slack’s new ChatGPT bot will talk to your colleagues for you
Like Microsoft and Google, Slack owner Salesforce is shoving an AI chatbot into its workplace software to automatically write simple messages and summarize meetings.
Google’s one step closer to building its 1,000-language AI model
Google has all kinds of AI tech in development, including this Universal Speech Model, that’s part of its attempt to build a model that can understand the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages.
Meet the companies trying to keep up with ChatGPT
From Google’s Bard to Microsoft’s new Bing, here are all the major contenders in the AI chatbot space.
- RApple isn’t placing new restrictions on AI features in apps, at least not yet.
On Thursday, the developer of BlueMail — who has squared off with Apple over its App Store policies before — said the company held up an update adding ChatGPT-powered email generation and other features.
A reviewer said his app needed to add content moderation or else restrict access to ages 17 and up, but then later, the same update was approved, unchanged. The App Store doesn’t have policies about AI specifically, so we can only wait and see if it tightens restrictions further,
- RBing AI patch notes.
If you’re trying to keep pace with what’s happening in generative AI, look no further than Microsoft’s Bing Blog, which has posted details of what’s new in the preview release of its ChatBot and promises regular updates to summarize what they’re learning.
That includes the Chat Tones to tune its personality, Turn Counters, and other changes this time around, but my main question is, do they use Bing AI to write up the summaries?
Bing Preview Release Notes: Tone Changes and More[blogs.bing.com]
Microsoft now lets you change Bing’s chatbot personality to be more entertaining
Microsoft restricted Bing AI in recent days after wild responses, but a new toggle lets the chatbot get more creative once again.
OpenAI announces an API for ChatGPT and its Whisper speech-to-text tech
Now developers can officially integrate ChatGPT into their products and services. Get ready, y’all.
Microsoft brings its new AI-powered Bing to the Windows 11 taskbar
A big new Windows 11 update is now available that also includes Phone Link for iOS, a touch-optimized taskbar, and much more.
- RAre you exaggerating what your AI product can do?
The FTC is casually warning companies to not do that in their advertisements, despite all of the current hype around AI bots and generative technology of all types.
Does the product actually use AI at all?
If you think you can get away with baseless claims that your product is AI-enabled, think again. In an investigation, FTC technologists and others can look under the hood and analyze other materials to see if what’s inside matches up with your claims. Before labeling your product as AI-powered, note also that merely using an AI tool in the development process is not the same as a product having AI in it.
Keep your AI claims in check[Federal Trade Commission]
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta now has a team building AI tools and ‘personas’
Zuckerberg says the company is building AI-powered tools for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
Would you let ChatGPT control your smart home?
This proof-of-concept video by Josh.ai shows how AI language models could finally make your smart home voice assistant, well, actually smart.
Snapchat is releasing its own AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT
The ‘My AI’ bot will initially only be available to paying Snapchat Plus subscribers. CEO Evan Spiegel says it’s just the beginning for the company’s generative AI plans.
AI-generated fiction is flooding literary magazines — but not fooling anyone
Prominent science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarkesworld announced it would pause submissions after a flood of AI spam. It’s not the only outlet getting AI-generated stories.
- JOpenAI CEO Sam Altman has some thoughts about the future of artificial general intelligence.
AGI, or artificial intelligence that’s as smart as a human, isn’t here yet — see, uh, everything Bing has done lately. But if it ever does arrive, Altman is (unsurprisingly) quite excited for it, and in his latest OpenAI blog, he talks about how the company is thinking about it.
Planning for AGI and beyond[OpenAI]
Feb 24James Vincent and Jay Peters
Meta has a new machine learning language model to remind you it does AI too
This isn’t a system you can talk to but, rather, a research tool that Meta is hoping others will use to solve some of the problems that plague AI language models.
Microsoft has been secretly testing its Bing chatbot ‘Sydney’ for years
Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot history dates back at least six years, with Sydney first appearing in 2021.
- ECan you think like an AI?
The game is to guess the secret word. The hitch is that the AI is classifying what words are alike. Yesterday’s word was “grasshopper,” and the AI thought “ant” was closer than “cricket.” Maybe that’s true if you’re analyzing texts to predict the next word — after all, there’s a fable about an ant and a grasshopper — but “cricket” and “grasshopper” are synonyms!
Contexto[contexto.me]
Bing’s Chat mode is now on mobile — and you can speak to it
Yes, you can now speak directly to Bing or add it to a Skype conversation if you’re feeling particularly lonely.
China regulators rein in AI chatbots over fears of uncensored replies: report
Chinese tech giants have reportedly been told not to offer public access to the US-developed ChatGPT. These companies have already had to censor the output of AI tools like image generators.
- SMicrosoft broke the fun Bing game.
Remember that cool video game where we could pretend a chatbot was an AI with multiple personalities and watch it play along?
While Microsoft has only publicly admitted to playing with how many turns you get and tweaking the AI’s “tone”, the reality is that Bing just doesn’t answer fun questions like those anymore. It’ll end the conversation as soon as you ask one. Lame!
- RIf you need to use AI to respond to a tragedy, maybe it’s better to say nothing at all.
The Vanderbilt Hustler reports the school’s Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is apologizing after sending a message regarding the shooting at Michigan State University that was “paraphrased” from OpenAI’s ChatGPT model (via Gizmodo).
The generic-sounding email lacks any kind of personal touch, and responses to it reflect that, as noted by this quote from Vanderbilt student Laith Kayat:
Deans, provosts, and the chancellor: Do more. Do anything. And lead us into a better future with genuine, human empathy, not a robot
Image: Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Microsoft is already undoing some of the limits it placed on Bing AI
Last week, Microsoft limited how much people could talk to Bing, and after complaints, it’s expanding access again.
- AAI-spam has driven one of the best science fiction and fantasy magazines to close submissions.
Clarkesworld has always been a great place to submit your short fiction because they respond fast and pay well. There’s not a lot of waiting to learn if you’ve been accepted or not. Unfortunately, the Hugo-winning magazine has been forced to temporarily stop accepting submissions because it was getting hit with too many AI-generated submissions. Submissions will reopen eventually, but editor Neil Clarke says the current tools for spotting AI-generated submissions aren’t “reliable enough.”
Microsoft limits Bing chat to five replies to stop the AI from getting real weird
Microsoft’s new limits mean Bing chatbot users can only ask a maximum of five questions per session and 50 in total per day.
Introducing the AI Mirror Test, which very smart people keep failing
Chatbots like Bing are software — not sentient.
As conservatives criticize ‘woke AI,’ here are ChatGPT’s rules for answering culture war queries
AI speech is another front in America’s culture wars
- E“They don’t actually tell us this is Bard, but this has Bard’s fingerprints all over it.”
AI is based on low-paid labor. This interview with one of the people who help decide what Google will show you is worth a read — for starters, he says he makes $3 less per hour than his daughter, who works in fast food.
Microsoft’s Bing AI plotted its revenge and offered me furry porn
We’re enjoying this hallucination.
AI search engines are not your friends
A search engine that guilt-trips you isn’t just creepy — it’s bad product design.
The Supreme Court could be about to decide the legal fate of AI search
Are the robots responsible for what they say?
Microsoft says talking to Bing for too long can cause it to go off the rails
Microsoft says the new AI-powered Bing is getting daily improvements as it responds to feedback on mistakes, tone, and data.
Microsoft’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar, and people love it
Microsoft’s AI chatbot has been online for less than a fortnight and is already going wild.
Here’s why you’re still waiting for Bing AI
Microsoft says it’s now testing the new Bing in 169 countries and that millions have signed up to the waitlist.
- JWe’re all living through our own personal AI hype cycle.
If you’ve been playing around with ChatGPT or Bing’s AI chatbot you’ll know exactly what this guy is talking about. Also, “spicy autocomplete” is very good — apologies if we steal that Mike.
BuzzFeed’s first AI-generated articles are ad-lib quizzes
The website announced last month that it would use OpenAI tools to assist with content creation.
These are Microsoft’s Bing AI secret rules and why it says it’s named Sydney
Bing AI often refers to itself as Sydney, but Microsoft says that was an internal codename for a chat experience it was previously working on.
- JDo my AI’s deceive me, or have my AIs been deceived?
Scientists at the University of Chicago have created Glaze, a tool that could help artists prevent their artwork from being replicated by AI art generators by invisibly mimicking a different art style.
Glaze isn’t available just yet and the team acknowledges it isn’t a perfect solution, but it could help bridge the gap while copyright protections catch up with generative AI technology.
Glazed artwork looks completely unchanged to the naked eye, but pixel-level alterations can fool AI art generators into emulating a different art style. Image: Ben Zhao Microsoft’s Bing AI, like Google’s, also made dumb mistakes during first demo
Bing AI users have found that Microsoft’s chatbot is making a lot of mistakes. It even made financial errors during Microsoft’s first demos.
Opera’s building ChatGPT into its sidebar
The company’s testing a new AI-powered ‘shorten’ feature that provides bulleted summaries of the article or webpage you’re reading.