ChatGPT could become a smart personal assistant helping with everything from work to vacation planning

Now that ChatGPT has had a go at composing poetry, writing emails, and coding apps, it's turning its attention to more complex tasks and real-world applications, according to a new report – essentially, being able to do a lot of your computing for you.

This comes from The Information (via Android Authority), which says that ChatGPT developer OpenAI is working on “agent software” that will act almost like a personal assistant. It would be able to carry out clicks and key presses as it works inside applications from web browsers to spreadsheets.

We've seen something similar with the Rabbit R1, although that device hasn't yet shipped. You teach an AI how to calculate a figure in a spreadsheet, or format a document, or edit an image, and then it can do the job for you in the future.

Another type of agent in development will take on online tasks, according to the sources speaking to The Information: These agents are going to be able to research topics for you on the web, or take care of hotel and flight bookings, for example. The idea is to create a “supersmart personal assistant” that anyone can use.

Our AI agent future?

The Google Gemini logo on a laptop screen that's on an orange background

Google is continuing work on its own AI (Image credit: Google)

As the report acknowledges, this will certainly raise one or two concerns about letting automated bots loose on people's personal computers: OpenAI is going to have to do a lot of work to reassure users that its AI agents are safe and secure.

While many of us will be used to deploying macros to automate tasks, or asking Google Assistant or Siri to do something for us, this is another level up. Your boss isn't likely to be too impressed if you blame a miscalculation in the next quarter's financial forecast on the AI agent you hired to do the job.

It also remains to be seen just how much automation people want when it comes to these tasks: Booking vacations involves a lot of decisions, from the position of your seats on an airplane to having breakfast included, which AI would have to make on your behalf.

There's no timescale on any of this, but it sounds like OpenAI is working hard to get its agents ready as soon as possible. Google just announced a major upgrade to its own AI tools, while Apple is planning to reveal its own take on generative AI at some point later this year, quite possibly with iOS 18.

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OpenAI quietly slips in update for ChatGPT that allows users to tag their own custom-crafted chatbots

OpenAI is continuing to cement its status as the leading force in generative AI, adding a nifty little feature with little fanfare: the ability to tag a custom-created GPT bot with an ‘@’ in the prompt. 

In November 2023, custom ChatGPT-powered chatbots were introduced by OpenAI that would help users have specific types of conversations. These were named GPTs and customers who subscribed to OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT Plus service were able to build their own GPT-powered chatbot for their own purposes using OpenAI’s easy-to-use GPT-building interface. Users would then be able to help train and improve their own GPTs over time, making them “smarter” and better at accomplishing tasks asked of them by users. 

Also, earlier this year, OpenAI debuted the GPT store which allowed users to create their own GPT bots for specific categories like education, productivity, and “just for fun,” and then make them available for other users. Once they’re on the GPT store, the AI chatbots become searchable, can compete and rank in leaderboards against GPTs created by other users, and eventually users will even be able to earn money for their creators. 

Surprising new feature

It seems OpenAI has now made it easier to switch to a custom GPT chatbot, with an eagle-eyed ChatGPT fan, @danshipper, spotting that you can summon a GPTs with an ‘@’ while chatting with ChatGPT.

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Cybernews suggests that it’ll make switching between these different custom GPT personas more fluid and easier to use. OpenAI hasn’t publicized this new development yet, and it seems like this change specifically applies to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. 

This would somewhat mimic existing functionalities of apps like Discord and Slack, and could prove popular with ChatGPT users who wanted to make their own personal chatbot ecosystems populated by custom GPT chatbots that can be interacted with in a similar manner to those apps.

However, it’s interesting that OpenAI hasn’t announced or even mentioned this update, leaving users to discover it by themselves. It’s a distinctive approach to introducing new features for sure. 

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Has ChatGPT been getting a little lazy for you? OpenAI has just released a fix

It would seem reports of 'laziness' on the part of the ChatGPT AI bot were pretty accurate, as its developer OpenAI just announced a fix for the problem – which should mean the bot takes fewer shortcuts and is less likely to fail half way through trying to do something.

The latest update to the ChatGPT code is “intended to reduce cases of 'laziness' where the model doesn’t complete a task” according to OpenAI. However, it's worth noting that this only applies to the GPT-4 Turbo model that's still in a limited preview.

If you're a free user on GPT-3.5 or a paying user on GPT-4, you might still notice a few problems in terms of ChatGPT's abilities – although we're assuming that eventually the upgrade will trickle its way down to the other models as well.

Back in December, OpenAI mentioned a lack of updates and “unpredictable” behavior as reasons why users might be noticing subpar performance from ChatGPT, and it would seem that the work to try and get these issues resolved is still ongoing.

More thorough

ChatGPT voice chat

ChatGPT is pushing forward on mobile too (Image credit: Future)

One of the tasks that GPT-4 Turbo can now complete “more thoroughly” is generating code, according to OpenAI. More complex tasks can also be completed from a single prompt, while the model will also be cheaper for users to work with.

Many of the other model upgrades mentioned in the OpenAI blog post are rather technical – but the takeaways are that these AI bots are getting smarter, more accurate, and more efficient. A lot of improvements are related to “embeddings”, the numerical representations that AI bots use to understand words and the context around them.

ChatGPT recently got its very own app store, where third-party developers can showcase their own custom-made bots (or GPTs). However, there are rules in place that ban certain types of chatbots – like virtual girlfriends.

It also appears that OpenAI is busy pushing ChatGPT forward on mobile, with the latest ChatGPT beta for Android offering the ability to load up the bot from any screen (much as you might do with Google Assistant or Siri).

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ChatGPT steps up its plan to become your default voice assistant on Android

A recent ChatGPT beta is giving a select group of users the ability to turn the AI into their device’s new default voice assistant on Android.

This information comes from industry insider Mishaal Rahman on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) who posted a video of himself trying out the feature live. According to the post, users can add a shortcut to ChatGPT Assistant, as it’s referred to, directly into an Android’s Quick Settings panel. Tapping the ChatGPT entry on there causes a new UI overlay to appear on-screen, consisting of a plain white circle near the bottom of the display. From there, you verbally give it a prompt, and after several seconds, the assistant responds with an answer. 

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The clip shows it does take the AI some time to come up with a response – about 15 seconds. Throughout this time, the white circle will display a bubbling animation to indicate it’s generating a reply. When talking back, the animation turns more cloud-like. You can also interrupt ChatGPT at any time just by tapping the screen. Doing so causes the circle to turn black.

Setting up

The full onboarding process of the feature is unknown although 9To5Google claims in their report you will need to pick a voice when you launch it for the first time. If they like what they hear, they can stick with a particular voice or go back a step to exchange it with another. Previews of each voice can be found on OpenAI’s website too. They consist of three male and two female voices. Once all that is settled, the assistant will subsequently launch as normal with the white circle near the bottom.

To try out this update, you will need a subscription to ChatGPT Plus which costs $ 20 a month. Next, you install either ChatGPT for Android version 1.2024.017 or .018, whatever is available to you. Go to the Beta Features section in ChatGPT’s Settings menu and it should be there ready to be activated. As stated earlier, only a select group of people will gain access. It's not a guarantee.

Future default

Apparently, the assistant is present on earlier builds. 9ToGoogle states the patch is available on ChatGPT beta version 1.2024.010 with limited functionality. They claim the patch introduces the Quick Setting tile, but not the revamped UI.

Rahman in his post says no one can set ChatGPT as their default assistant at the moment. However, lines of code found in a ChatGPT patch from early January suggest this will be possible in the future. We reached out to OpenAI asking if there are plans to expand the beta’s availability. This story will be updated at a later time.

Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best ChatGPT extensions for Chrome that everyone should use. There are four in total.

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ChatGPT will get video-creation powers in a future version – and the internet isn’t ready for it

The web's video misinformation problem is set to get a lot worse before it gets better, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman going on the record to say that video-creation capabilities are coming to ChatGPT within the next year or two.

Speaking to Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast (via Tom's Guide), Altman pointed to multimodality – the ability to work across text, images, audio and “eventually video” – as a key upgrade for ChatGPT and its models over the next two years.

While the OpenAI boss didn't go into too much detail about how this is going to work or what it would look like, it will no doubt work along similar lines to the image-creation capabilities that ChatGPT (via DALL-E) already offers: just type a few lines as a prompt, and you get back an AI-generated picture based on that description.

Once we get to the stage where you can ask for any kind of video you like, featuring any subject or topic you like, we can expect to see a flood of deepfake videos hit the web – some made for fun and for creative purposes, but many intended to spread misinformation and to scam those who view them.

The rise of the deepfakes

Deepfake videos are already a problem of course – with AI-generated videos of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak popping up on Facebook just this week – but it looks as though the problem is about to get significantly worse.

Adding video-creation capabilities to a widely accessible and simple-to-use tool like ChatGPT will mean it gets easier than ever to churn out fake video content, and that's a major worry when it comes to separating fact from fiction.

The US will be going to the polls later this year, and a general election in the UK is also likely to happen at some point in 2024. With deepfake videos purporting to show politicians saying something they never actually said already circulating, there's a real danger of false information spreading online very quickly.

With AI-generated content becoming more and more difficult to spot, the best way of knowing who, and what, to trust is to stick to well-known and reputable publications online for your news sources – so not something that's been reposted by a family member on Facebook, or pasted from an unknown source on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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CoPilot Pro leak suggests Microsoft will soon make you pay for its ChatGPT Plus features

Microsoft has spent billions on integrating ChatGPT into its Copilot AI assistant for Edge, Bing and Windows 11 – and a new code leak suggests it could be planning to claw back some of that investment very soon.

As spotted by Android Authority, some new Edge browser updates for Android contain several code references to a 'Copilot Pro' tier that isn't yet available. Right now, Copilot (previously called Bing Chat) is completely free and, as Tom's Guide recently noticed, even gives some access to the latest ChatGPT model, GPT-4 Turbo.

But those days could be numbered if Copilot Pro does become a reality. The code contains references to a “pay wall upsell” option, which suggests that Microsoft is planning its equivalent of ChatGPT Plus. The latter currently costs $ 20 / £16 / AU$ 28 per month.

Those strings of code discovered in Edge also give us hints of what kind of features a Copilot Pro subscription might give us. These include access to the newest AI models (in other words, ChatGPT's GPT-4 Turbo), priority server access, and “high-quality” image generation.

While it seems likely that a free Copilot tier will continue to be available, the days of Microsoft giving us quite so many free AI perks, then, could be drawing to a close.

Plus points

Copilot in Windows

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The arrival of a ChatGPT Pro subscription has always been a matter of when rather than if, when you consider how much its costs to run an AI assistant on the scale of Microsoft Copilot. In the case of ChatGPT, some estimates suggest the computer hardware costs could be as high as $ 700,000 a day.

This is why ChatGPT launched its Plus subscription in February 2023 – and, a year on, it looks like Microsoft Copilot Pro could soon be following in that paid model's footsteps. 

Unfortunately, that could mean the free version of Copilot becoming a bit dumber, as that version currently gives you access to ChatGPT's latest models and also Dall-E 3 image generation. 

Hopefully, some of Copilot's current restrictions, like being limited to 300 conversations per day, will also be eased in the Pro version. While we don't yet know when this Copilot Pro tier might launch, it looks like we could find out very soon.

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ChatGPT gets its equivalent of the App Store – here are the best early GPTs

OpenAI has officially launched its GPT Store, allowing a select group of users and official partners to share customized chatbots with the community.

The platform won't be available to the wider public, according to the company You must have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus ($ 20 / £16 a month), Enterprise, or the newly formed Teams plan. Once you buy the subscription, you’ll be given access to a variety of GPTs across multiple categories. These include writing, programming, and art generation – some will even provide lifestyle advice. One, in particular, can help you refine designs for a tattoo you’re thinking of getting. 

The GPT Store was originally announced this past November during the company’s first DevDay conference. It was shown alongside OpenAI’s then-new create-a-chatbot service. The store was supposed to open later that month but was delayed multiple times, most likely as a consequence of the sudden ousting and reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman.  

Curated chatbot

Although the average person can’t try out chatbots, you can head over to the store’s page right now to see what’s available. Make sure you’re not logged into your account: if you are, you’ll get a message telling you to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. OpenAI will highlight four GPTs at the top of the page every week. At the time of writing, AllTrails, Consensus, Code Tutor, and Books are being recommended.

The first one, AllTrails, will suggest nature trails for you to explore. Consensus, formerly known as ResearchGPT, has access to 200 million academic papers and can answer your tough science questions. Code Tutor, developed by the education platform Khan Academy, will look over your recently made computer code and make suggestions on how to improve it. Finally, there’s Books, the most mysterious of the bunch. Its description is rather vague, however, if we had to guess what it does, we'd say it provides book recommendations.

GPT Store front page

(Image credit: Future)

Below that are a couple of other lists highlighting chatbots currently trending among the community and those made by OpenAI’s internal team. There are plans to implement a revenue program that will allow people to make money from their creations. Creators will “be paid based on user engagement” with their chatbots. Details are light at the moment. All that’s known currently is it’ll launch sometime in Q1 2024 in the United States.

Follow the rules

Anybody with a subscription can create a GPT. OpenAI states you don’t need any coding skills, although you will need to follow usage policies and brand guidelines. It wants to keep things clean. 

You can read the rules on the official website, but just to give you an idea, users cannot A) compromise people’s privacy, B) create an AI that may impair the well-being of others, or C) use the platform to spread misinformation. Break the rules, and the company will restrict your ability to share or monetize your work. If you run into any of these rogues on the GPT Store, OpenAI asks that you report them.

If you have a creation, you can share it by first saving your GPT and then selecting Everyone in the process. This gives all people on the platform access. Once done, you’ll need to “verify your Builder Profile” in the Settings menu. After you do all that, you should see your chatbot on the storefront.

While we have you check out TechRadar's list of seven tips for ChatGPT beginners. That generative AI can be a little tricky to use.

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ChatGPT may be plotting to replace Google Assistant on your Android phone, ahead of its landmark bot store launch

We can't say for sure whether or not AI is secretly plotting world domination – but it does appear that ChatGPT developer OpenAI has designs on replacing Google Assistant as the default helper tool on Android devices.

Some digging by the team at Android Authority has revealed hidden code in the latest version of the ChatGPT app for Android: code that triggers a small pop-up prompt at the bottom of the screen, just like Google Assistant (or Siri on the iPhone).

The thinking is that you wouldn't have to launch ChatGPT for Android to get answers from the AI bot – you could just hold down a shortcut button, or even say “hey ChatGPT”. There also seems to be a new tile in the works for the Quick Settings panel on Android, giving users another way of getting to ChatGPT.

This wouldn't exactly be a hostile coup – Android already allows the default digital assistant app to be switched, to something like Alexa or Bixby – but it's interesting that OpenAI wants to expand the reach of ChatGPT. As always though, plans can change, so it's not certain that we'll see this functionality appear.

Store opening

In other ChatGPT news, the GPT Store that OpenAI promised last year is now scheduled to launch next week, after a delay – as per emails sent out to people signed up to a paid ChatGPT plan. It means users can create their own bespoke versions of ChatGPT and sell them on to other people and businesses.

These GPTs – or generative pre-trained transformers – are built on the same well of training data as ChatGPT, but they can be tweaked to take on specific personalities or accomplish particular tasks. Some rather obvious examples would be a bot that helps with tech support questions, or one that comes up with recipes.

Custom bots can also be loaded up with knowledge from outside OpenAI's vaults – so if you've written a hundred scientific papers on dinosaur fossils, for example, you're able to plug all of this data into a GPT and ask questions about the research. Right now, you need a ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise account to build a bot.

OpenAI is no doubt trying to foster the same kind of innovation and growth that we've seen in smartphone apps, ever since Apple opened the iPhone App Store in 2008. However, at the moment we're still waiting on a lot of details, including how users can get verified, and how sales revenue will be split.

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Google Bard Advanced leak hints at imminent launch for ChatGPT rival

The release of Google Bard’s Advanced tier may be coming sooner than people expected, according to a recent leak, and what's more, it won’t be free.

Well, it’s not a “leak” per se; the company left a bunch of clues on its website that anybody could find if you know where to look. That’s how developer Bedros Pamboukian on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) found lines of code hinting at the imminent launch of Bard Advanced. What’s interesting is the discovery reveals the souped-up AI will be bundled with Google One, and if you buy a subscription, you can try it out as part of a three-month trial.

There is a bit of hype surrounding Bard Advanced because it will be powered by Google’s top-of-the-line Gemini Ultra model. In an announcement post from this past December, the company states Gemini Ultra has been designed to deal with “highly complex tasks and accept multimodal inputs”. This possibility is backed up by another leak from user Dylan Roussel on X claiming the chatbot will be capable of “advanced math and reasoning skills.”

It’s unknown which Google One tier people will have to buy to gain access or if there will be a new one for Bard Advanced. Neither leak reveals a price tag. But if we had to take a wild guess, you may have to opt for the $ 10 a month Premium plan. Considering the amount of interest surrounding the AI, it would make sense for Google to put up a high barrier for entry.

Potential features

Going back to the Roussel leak, it reveals a lot of other features that may or may not be coming to Google Bard. Things might change or “they may never land at all.”

First, it may be possible to create customized bots using the AI’s tool. There is very little information about them. We don’t know what they do or if they’re shareable. The only thing we do know is the bots are collectively codenamed Motoko.

Next, it appears Bard will receive a couple of extra tools. You have Gallery, a set of publicly viewable prompts on a variety of topics users can check out for brainstorming ideas. Then there’s Tasks. Roussel admits he couldn’t find many details about it, but to his understanding, it’ll be “used to manage long-running tasks such as” image generation.

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Speaking of generating images, the third feature allows users a way to create backgrounds and foregrounds for smartphones and website banners. The last one, called Power Up, is said to be able to improve text prompts. Once again, there’s little information to go on. We don’t know how the backgrounds can be made (if that’s what’s going on) or what powering up a text prompt even looks like. It's hard to say for sure.

Users probably won’t have to wait for very long to get the full picture. Given the fact these were hidden on Google’s website, the official rollout must be just around the corner.

2024 is shaping up to be a big year for artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to the likes of Google Bard and its ChatGPT. If you want to know which one we think will come out on top, check out TechRadar's ChatGPT vs Google Bard analyzation.

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Here’s how Apple is planning to take on ChatGPT

Apple may be lagging behind when it comes to generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, but it seems determined to catch up as soon as possible – and we just got a better idea of exactly how it's going to do that.

According to The New York Times, Apple is hoping to strike a deal with news publishers, to get access to their archives of content. AI models developed by Apple could then be trained on the vast amounts of written material in those archives.

The report says that “multi-year deals” worth “at least $ 50 million” are on the table, although it sounds as though none of the negotiations have reached a conclusion as of yet. Apple, as you would expect, has refused to comment.

As per the NYT, the heavyweight publishers involved in the talks include Condé Nast (responsible for outlets such as Vogue and The New Yorker), IAC (which runs People, The Daily Beast and Better Homes and Gardens), and NBC News.

Copy rights and wrongs

These deal rumors highlight a core part of how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT's GPT-4 and Bard's Gemini work. They analyze huge amounts of text to learn to be able to produce convincing sentences of their own.

AI companies have been rather circumspect about where they've got the data that their models are trained on, but a vast web scraping operation is no doubt involved somewhere. In other words, if you've written something that's on the internet, it's probably been used to help train an AI.

The likes of OpenAI have promised to defend businesses who use AI models against copyright claims – a sure sign that these developers of artificial intelligence engines know that they're not on the firmest of ground when it comes to intellectual property issues.

To Apple's credit, it seems the company is attempting to reimburse writers and publishers for use of their articles, rather than just taking first and asking permission later. Expect to hear more from Apple on AI during the course of 2024.

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