The AI Creative Revolution is Here: Now What?

Did an AI write this blog? The TV show you just watched? The news story you just read? Thanks to ChatGPT you won’t know, or eventually care…

ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022, a day that will be remembered as the dawn of a new era for humanity. That sounds hyperbolic, but the more I wrap my head around this technology and its potential implications, the more I’m convinced it’ll be as transformative as the Guttenberg Press, radio and television, and the Internet. Nothing will ever be the same.

That’s because since that day, we’ll no longer know for sure whether a human, a machine, or a hybrid of both create the content we consume. The proverbial cat is officially out of the AI bag, soon completely disrupting everything from entertainment to journalism, commerce to politics, education to virtually all aspects of our lives on and offline.

The new technology is so powerful that its effects are already being felt. Consider this blog post. As a prelude, I’m going to ask ChatGPT how I can write a blog post using ChatGPT. That sounds rather “meta,” but what better way to illustrate its capabilities than to let the application “speak for itself”? These screenshots are from my interactions with the chatbot:

Sounds like good advice. But what’s going on here? Where do you find it? How does it work? What can it do? What are its risks? Let’s visit the website:

Here’s the home page of ChatGPT. These “Examples,” “Capabilities,” and “Limitations” descriptors have recently been added to make the experience more user friendly, and to caution about its noteworthy deficiencies and risks. Below them looms a simple, search engine-like box for you to enter any alphanumeric input, best in the form of a command or question:

What is ChatGPT & How Might it Be Used?

Writing this blog post, my first job is to succinctly tell you what ChatGPT is, how it came about, and what kinds of…