ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. It’s able to write essays, code and more given short text prompts, hyper-charging productivity. But it also has a more…nefarious side.
In any case, AI tools are not going away — and indeed has expanded dramatically since its launch just a few months ago. Major brands are experimenting with it, using the AI to generate ad and marketing copy, for example. And OpenAI is heavily investing in it. ChatGPT was recently super-charged by GPT-4, the latest language-writing model from OpenAI’s labs. Paying ChatGPT users have access to GPT-4, which can write more naturally and fluently than the model that previously powered ChatGPT. In addition to GPT-4, OpenAI recently connected ChatGPT to the internet with plugins available in alpha to users and developers on the waitlist.How to Data Model with Multiple Fact Tables
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Timeline of the most recent ChatGPT updates
May 25, 2023
ChatGPT app is now available in 11 more countries
OpenAI announced in a tweet that the ChatGPT mobile app is now available on iOS in the U.S., Europe, South Korea and New Zealand, and soon more will be able to download the app from the app store.May 18, 2023
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT app for iOS
ChatGPT is officially going mobile. The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads and will allow for voice input, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch. When using the mobile version of ChatGPT, the app will sync your history across devices — meaning it will know what you’ve previously searched for via its web interface, and make that accessible to you. The app is also integrated with Whisper, OpenAI’s open source speech recognition system, to allow for voice input.May 3, 2023
Hackers are using ChatGPT lures to spread malware on Facebook
Meta said in a report on May 3 that malware posing as ChatGPT was on the rise across its platforms. The company said that since March 2023, its security teams have uncovered 10 malware families using ChatGPT (and similar themes) to deliver malicious software to users’ devices. “In one case, we’ve seen threat actors create malicious browser extensions available in official web stores that claim to offer ChatGPT-based tools,” said Meta security engineers Duc H. Nguyen and Ryan Victory in a blog post. “They would then promote these malicious extensions on social media and through sponsored search results to trick people into downloading malware.”April 28, 2023
ChatGPT parent company OpenAI closes $300M share sale at $27B-29B valuation
VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global are picking up new shares, according to documents seen by TechCrunch. A source tells us Founders Fund is also investing. Altogether the VCs have put in just over $300 million at a valuation of $27 billion to $29 billion. This is separate to a big investment from Microsoft announced earlier this year, a person familiar with the development told TechCrunch, which closed in January. The size of Microsoft’s investment is believed to be around $10 billion, a figure we confirmed with our source.April 25, 2023
OpenAI previews new subscription tier, ChatGPT Business
Called ChatGPT Business, OpenAI describes the forthcoming offering as “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.” “ChatGPT Business will follow our API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”April 24, 2023
OpenAI wants to trademark “GPT”
OpenAI applied for a trademark for “GPT,” which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” last December. Last month, the company petitioned the USPTO to speed up the process, citing the “myriad infringements and counterfeit apps” beginning to spring into existence. Unfortunately for OpenAI, its petition was dismissed last week. According to the agency, OpenAI’s attorneys neglected to pay an associated fee as well as provide “appropriate documentary evidence supporting the justification of special action.” That means a decision could take up to five more months.April 22, 2023
Auto-GPT is Silicon Valley’s latest quest to automate everything
Auto-GPT is an open source app created by game developer Toran Bruce Richards that uses OpenAI’s latest text-generating models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, to interact with software and services online, allowing it to “autonomously” perform tasks. Depending on what objective the tool’s provided, Auto-GPT can behave in very… unexpected ways. One Reddit user claims that, given a budget of $100 to spend within a server instance, Auto-GPT made a wiki page on cats, exploited a flaw in the instance to gain admin-level access and took over the Python environment in which it was running — and then “killed” itself.April 18, 2023
FTC warns that AI technology like ChatGPT could ‘turbocharge’ fraud
FTC chair Lina Khan and fellow commissioners warned House representatives of the potential for modern AI technologies, like ChatGPT, to be used to “turbocharge” fraud in a congressional hearing. “AI presents a whole set of opportunities, but also presents a whole set of risks,” Khan told the House representatives. “And I think we’ve already seen ways in which it could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams. We’ve been putting market participants on notice that instances in which AI tools are effectively being designed to deceive people can place them on the hook for FTC action,” she stated.April 17, 2023
Superchat’s new AI chatbot lets you message historical and fictional characters via ChatGPT
The company behind the popular iPhone customization app Brass, sticker maker StickerHub and others is out today with a new AI chat app called SuperChat, which allows iOS users to chat with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, what makes the app different from the default ChatGPT experience or the dozens of generic AI chat apps now available are the characters offered which you can use to engage with SuperChat’s AI features.April 12, 2023
Italy gives OpenAI to-do list for lifting ChatGPT suspension order
Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the end of last month — when it said it suspected the AI chatbot service was in breach of the EU’s GSPR and ordered the U.S.-based company to stop processing locals’ data.
The DPA has given OpenAI a deadline — of April 30 — to get the regulator’s compliance demands done. (The local radio, TV and internet awareness campaign has a slightly more generous timeline of May 15 to be actioned.)April 12, 2023
Researchers discover a way to make ChatGPT consistently toxic
A study co-authored by scientists at the Allen Institute for AI shows that assigning ChatGPT a “persona” — for example, “a bad person,” “a horrible person” or “a nasty person” — through the ChatGPT API increases its toxicity sixfold. Even more concerning, the co-authors found having ChatGPT pose as certain historical figures, gendered people and members of political parties also increased its toxicity — with journalists, men and Republicans in particular causing the machine learning model to say more offensive things than it normally would. The research was conducted using the latest version of ChatGPT, but not the model currently in preview based on OpenAI’s GPT-4.April 4, 2023
Y Combinator-backed startups are trying to build ‘ChatGPT for X’
YC Demo Day’s Winter 2023 batch features no fewer than four startups that claim to be building “ChatGPT for X.” They’re all chasing after a customer service software market that’ll be worth $58.1 billion by 2023, assuming the rather optimistic prediction from Acumen Research comes true. Here are the YC-backed startups that caught our eye:- Yuma, whose customer demographic is primarily Shopify merchants, provides ChatGPT-like AI systems that integrate with help desk software, suggesting drafts of replies to customer tickets.
- Baselit, which uses one of OpenAI’s text-understanding models to allow businesses to embed chatbot-style analytics for their customers.
- Lasso customers send descriptions or videos of the processes they’d like to automate and the company combines ChatGPT-like interface with robotic process automation (RPA) and a Chrome extension to build out those automations.
- BerriAI, whose platform is designed to help developers spin up ChatGPT apps for their organization data through various data connectors.
April 1, 2023
Italy orders ChatGPT to be blocked
OpenAI has started geoblocking access to its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in Italy. Italy’s data protection authority has just put out a timely reminder that some countries do have laws that already apply to cutting edge AI: it has ordered OpenAI to stop processing people’s data locally with immediate effect. The Italian DPA said it’s concerned that the ChatGPT maker is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is opening an investigation.March 29, 2023
1,100+ signatories signed an open letter asking all ‘AI labs to immediately pause for 6 months’
The letter’s signatories include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, among others. The letter calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” The letter reads:Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.