Generative AI Hits the Peak of Inflated Expectations: Gartner’s 2023 Hype Cycle

Generative AI has been placed on the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ in the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies due to the sheer number of products claiming to have it baked in. Generative AI has been identified by Gartner as a subset of AI that will bring “transformational benefit” in the next two to five years.   In addition to emergent AI, the Gartner release named other emerging tech trends: developer experience, pervasive cloud and human-centric security and privacy.

And I wanted to dig into a legal breakdown of The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, to investigate whether the company has engaged in unfair or deceptive privacy or data security practices. The CID contains 49 inquiries related to the company’s business practices and requests 17 classes of documents. The current Commission asserts that the FTC’s statutory authority under laws — including Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act — grant it the ability to regulate the conduct of AI developers whose practices violate these laws.

The other big framework this week was the Associated Press, who published guidelines for the use of generative AI in its newsroom.  The publication does not view AI as a replacement for journalists, but rather a tool to be used with caution. Any result from a generative AI platform should be treated as unvetted source material and subject to AP’s existing sourcing standards. The guidelines also prohibit the use of AI to alter photos, videos, or audio, and require staff to verify the veracity of any AI-generated content they use.  The guidelines prohibit the use of generative AI to create publishable content, including images, and encourage caution to prevent the spread of misinformation. The AP’s partnership with OpenAI has led to concerns that other outlets may view the AP’s guidelines as a license to use AI more excessively or underhandedly.

I think we’re right at the top of the rollercoaster, and frankly, have probably started down the slope into the trough of disillusionment.   That said, it’s a very fast ride.    I hope you like rollercoasters.

The FTC’s willingness to leverage existing laws should not be dismissed here.  That’s your legal framework to work with your customers around when considering AI, coupled with the Equal Employment laws I covered this week.     Now, layer on the AP’s guidelines.     I found this entirely complementary to the CoPilot approach – AI generated material is not source material.   

I use AI myself in summarization and never as a source.  That simplification is, again, useful for your customers.    Use those!  Your value as a provider is in the implementation, and let someone else do the framework creation.