Let’s talk more about AI. I’m never going to be able to cover everything nor keep up with the speed of releases, and instead will batch these up and review them. I’m not convinced speed is the solution to good coverage with these.
Google announced their upcoming ChatGPT competitor – it’s called Bard. The tool is an “experimental conversational AI service” that will answer users’ queries and participate in conversations. The software was available to a group of “trusted testers” Monday before becoming “more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.” It’s based on the company’s LaMDA technology.
Microsoft announced a new Bing experience would be in a limited preview starting today, which brings a ChatGPT like experience to the search engine. The company also announved a new version of Edge, which brings AI Enhancements to the browser as well. That includes two new features — “chat” and “compose.” These will be embedded within Edge’s sidebar. “Chat” allow users to summarize the webpage or document they’re looking at and ask questions about its contents, while “compose” acts as a writing assistant; helping to generate text, from emails to social media posts, based on a few starting prompts.
Axios does a roundup of the players, too – besides Google and Microsoft, Meta uses AI on News Feed items, content moderation, text translation, and others. Amazon uses AI in voice recognition and warehouse operations, and Apple… well…. They’re quiet so far.
A judge in Colombia used ChatGPT to make a court ruling – it’s the first time we know about the use of AI in a legal decision. The judge used the AI tool to pose legal questions about the case and included its responses in his decision, according to a court document dated January 30, 2023.
Researchers have found that image-generation AI tools such as the popular Stable Diffusion model memorize training images—typically made by real artists and scraped for free from the web—and can spit them out as nearly-identical copies. This from a paper released last week.
ZDNet has an interview focused on using generative AI to improve customer experience. The critical insight – integrations with CRM to provide even better insights.
Why do we care?
While tactically, it’s going to be essential to track the players here, and I expect them to be the big tech companies like Microsoft and Google, I’m convinced it’s the thorny questions brought up by the researchers or the judge that are where the value to be mined us.
Should that judge be required to disclose the use of AI? Does that extend to workers in general? Where will copyright fit in when considering derivative works based on AI? We like hard questions, as they are the very definition of consulting. Bringing expertise to bear on addressing these within the context of your customers.