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Posts tagged "ChatGPT"

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Elon Musk says xAI is launching its first model and it could be a ChatGPT rival
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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup company, xAI, will debut its first long-awaited AI model on Saturday, November 4.

The billionaire made the announcement on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) stating the tech will be released to a “select group” of people. He even boasts that “in some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.”

It’s been a while since we’ve last heard anything from xAI. The startup hit the scene back in July, revealing it’s run by a team of former engineers from Microsoft, Google, and even OpenAI. Shortly after the debut on July 14, Musk held a 90-minute-long Twitter Spaces chat where he talked about his vision for the company. During the chat, Musk stated his startup will seek to create “a good AGI with the overarching purpose of just trying to understand the universe”. He wants it to run contrary to what he believes is problematic tech from the likes of Microsoft and Google. 

Yet another chatbot

AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, and it’s the concept of an AI having “intelligence” comparable to or beyond that of a normal human being. The problem is that it's more of an idea of what AI could be rather than a literal piece of technology. Even Wired in their coverage of AGIs states there’s “no concrete definition of the term”.

So does this mean xAI will reveal some kind of super-smart model that will help humanity as well as be able to hold conversations like a sci-fi movie? No, but that could be the lofty end goal for Elon Musk and his team. We believe all we’ll see on November 5 is a simple chatbot like ChatGPT. Let’s call it “ChatX” since the billionaire has an obsession with the letter “X”.  

Does “ChatX” even stand a chance against the likes of Google Bard or ChatGPT? The latter has been around for almost a year now and has seen multiple updates becoming more refined each time. Maybe xAI has solved the hallucination problem. That'll be great to see. Unfortunately, it's possible ChatX could just be another vehicle for Musk to spread his ideas/beliefs.

Analysis: A personal truth spinner

Musk has talked about wanting to have an alternative to ChatGPT that focuses on providing the “truth”, whatever that means. Musk has been a vocal critic of how fast companies have been developing their own generative AI models with seemingly reckless abandon. He even called for a six-month pause on AI training in March. Obviously, that didn’t happen as the technology advanced by leaps and bounds since then.

It's worth mentioning that Twitter, under Musk's management, has been known to comply with censorship requests by governments from around the world, so Musk's definition of truth seems dubious at best. Either way, we’ll know soon enough what the team's intentions are. Just don’t get your hopes up.

While we have you, be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best AI writers for 2023.

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ChatGPT Plus gets big upgrade that makes it more powerful and easier to use
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ChatGPT is undoubtedly one of the best artificial intelligence (AI) tools you can use right now, but a new update could make it even better by increasing the range of file types it can work with, as well as making it a little more independent when it comes to switching modes.

The changes are currently being tested in beta and are expected to come to ChatGPT Plus, the paid-for version of OpenAI’s chatbot that costs $ 20 / £16 / AU$ 28 a month. As detailed by ChatGPT user luokai on Threads (via The Verge), these changes could make a big difference to how you use the AI tool.

Specifically, ChatGPT Plus members are now able to upload various files that the chatbot can use to generate results. For instance, luokai demonstrated how ChatGPT can analyze a PDF that a user uploads, then answer a question based on the contents of that PDF.

Elsewhere, the beta version of ChatGPT can create images based on a picture uploaded by a user. That could make the chatbot much more able to generate the type of content you’re after, without just having to solely rely on your prompt or description.

Automatic mode switching

ChatGPT responding to the prompt 'is there life after death?'

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Ascannio)

That’s not all this beta update brings with it. As well as file analysis, ChatGPT could soon be able to switch modes without any user input, in a move that might make the tool much less cumbersome to use.

Right now, you need to tell ChatGPT exactly what mode you want to use, such as Browse with Bing. In the current beta, though, ChatGPT is able to determine the mode automatically based on your conversation with the chatbot.

That can extend to generating Python code or opting to use Dall-E to generate an image too, meaning you should be able to get results much closer to what you wanted without having to make an educated guess as to the best mode to use.

All of these changes could make OpenAI’s chatbot much easier to use if you’re a ChatGPT Plus subscriber. There’s no word yet on when the features will be fully rolled out, so stay tuned for more news on that front.

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Google Bard can now respond to your AI queries in real time, like ChatGPT
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Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing Chat and Google Bard continue to iterate and improve, and Google's smart assistant is the latest to get a feature update – it can now respond to you in real time, if you want it to.

Before now, Bard has always taken the time to compose its responses in full, before putting them on screen. That's in contrast to ChatGPT and Bing Chat, which output text in real time while the answer is still being worked on.

Now, Google Bard will do that as well, by default. The update was spotted by 9to5Google, and we've seen it for ourselves too, though Bard's changelog hasn't yet been updated to reflect the different approach.

You should see a message on screen when you load up Bard on the web after the change has been applied. If you want to go back to the old way of working, you need to click the cog icon in the top right-hand corner, then choose Respond once complete.

Still the same bot

This change is really just a cosmetic one: there's no difference when it comes to the answers you're actually getting out of the AI behind Google Bard. However, the real time response does have more of a human feel to it – even if it's still the same bot.

With Bard now working in this way, it also means you can cut off the response before it's finished – maybe if you've phrased the prompt or question wrong for example, or if you can see that Bard isn't answering in the right way.

It's interesting that Bard is now copying the way that ChatGPT and Bing Chat (powered by ChatGPT) have always worked, though ultimately these AI engines are going to be judged based on the quality of their responses rather than how they answer.

As before, when Google Bard has finished responding, you can view alternative responses via the View other drafts link to the top right. You can also click the sliders button at the bottom to tweak the response (making it shorter or simpler, for example).

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Meta AI is coming to your social media apps – and I’ve already forgotten about ChatGPT
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Meta is going all out on artificial intelligence, first developing its own version of ChatGPT as well as implementing Instagram’s AI ‘personas’ to appeal to a younger audience. Now, the company has announced a new AI image generation and editing feature during Meta’s Connect event, which will be coming to Instagram soon. 

If you’re familiar with OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, Meta AI will feel very familiar to you. The all-general purpose assistant can help with all sorts of planning and organizational tasks, and will now offer the ability to generate images via the prompt ‘/imagine’. 

You’ll also be able to show Meta AI on Instagram a photo you wish to post and ask it to apply a watercolour effect, make the image black and white and so on. Think of the Meta assistant as a more ‘social’ version of ChatGPT, baked right into your social media apps.

Alongside the assistant, the initial roster of 28 AI characters is beginning to roll out across the company’s messaging app. Most of these characters are based on celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, Paris Hilton and my personal favourite, Snoop Dogg! You can chat with these ‘personas’ directly and finally ask Paris what lipgloss she uses. As you chat with the characters their profile image will animate based on the topic of conversation, which is pretty cool considering chatting with most AI chatbots is kind of… boring, at least from a visual standpoint.

ChatGPT may have started it, but Meta could finish it

It’s clear that Meta is taking AI integration very seriously, and I love to see it! By integrating its virtual assistant and AI tools into the apps billions of people use every day it’s guaranteed an existing user base, and in my opinion, shows that the company has taken the time to really understand why users would approach their product. 

Instead of just unleashing an assistant that will give you recipes and do your homework, it looks like Meta AI is tailored to suit everyday purposes and feels like a really clever way to implement the tool in people’s lives. The assistant is right there in the app if and when you need it, so you don’t have to leave the app to engage with the assistant.

Meta’s huge scale of potential users gives it a good chance of being the AI assistant people will use for the first time and could be the AI assistant people will end up using on a day-to-day basis. No extra app to download or account to make, and no swiping away from your conversation to get to what you need. I think Meta made a smart choice taking its time and has now come out the gate swinging – and I really do think ChatGPT creators OpenAI should be a little bit worried. 

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ChatGPT can finally get up-to-date answers from the internet – here’s how
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OpenAI isn't slowing down with the development of ChatGPT: only a few days after the AI chatbot added support for picture prompts and voice conversations, ChatGPT is now able to once again search the web and return answers that are right up to date.

“ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources,” says the OpenAI post on X. “It is no longer limited to data before September 2021.”

What that post doesn't mention is that this is the same functionality that ChatGPT briefly had early this year, before it was pulled in July – users were deploying the feature to get around paywalls and access paid-for content for free. As far as we can tell from our testing, OpenAI has now plugged that particular gap.

As before, ChatGPT uses Bing to search the web – no surprise considering how closely Microsoft and OpenAI have been working together in recent years. OpenAI suggests the feature is best used for “tasks that require up-to-date information”, like planning a vacation or doing some technical research.

How it works

ChatGPT and Bing

ChatGPT knows the iPhone 15 is out, but not who’s playing tonight (Image credit: Future)

Right now, you need to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber to give the bot access to the web, which will set you back $ 20 / £16 a month. Enterprise users also get the feature right away, with access for everyone else coming “soon” OpenAI says.

Once you've logged into ChatGPT on the web, you need to select the GPT-4 engine, and then pick 'Browse with Bing' from the menu that pops up underneath. You can then start your conversation, and the bot will use information from the web in addition to the data it has access to from its regular training.

We successfully got ChatGPT to tell us when the iPhone 15 launched, and it even linked back to a reputable tech website with more information (though it wasn't TechRadar, sadly). That's one example of how the AI assistant now knows everything that's going on – as long as it's on the web.

The feature is still labeled as being in beta, so expect more refinements and improvements in the future. It's also only as good as Bing's search results, so for anything that the search engine isn't sure on – like tonight's soccer matches in the UK – you might get directed to a relevant website instead of seeing the answers.

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Forget ChatGPT – NExT-GPT can read and generate audio and video prompts, taking generative AI to the next level
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2023 has felt like a year dedicated to artificial intelligence and its ever-expanding capabilities, but the era of pure text output is already losing steam. The AI scene might be dominated by giants like ChatGPT and Google Bard, but a new large language model (LLM), NExT-GPT, is here to shake things up – offering the full bounty of text, image, audio, and video output. 

NExT-GPT is the brainchild of researchers from the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University. Pitched as an ‘any-to-any’ system, NExT-GPT can accept inputs in different formats and deliver responses according to the desired output in video, audio, image, and text responses. This means that you can put in a text prompt and NExT-GPT can process that prompt into a video, or you can give it an image and have that converted to an audio output. 

ChatGPT has only just announced the capability to ‘see, hear and speak’ which is similar to what NExT-GPT is offering – but ChatGPT is going for a more mobile-friendly version of this kind of feature, and is yet to introduce video capabilities. 

We’ve seen a lot of ChatGPT alternatives and rivals pop up over the past year, but NExT-GPT is one of the few LLMs we’ve seen so far that can match the text-based output of ChatGPT but also provide outputs beyond what OpenAI’s popular chatbot can currently do. You can head over to the GitHub page or the demo page to try it out for yourself. 

So, what is it like?

I’ve fiddled around with NExT-GPT on the demo site and I have to say I’m impressed, but not blown away. Of course, this is not a polished product that has the advantages of public feedback, multiple updates, and so on – but it is still very good. 

I asked it to turn a photo of my cat Miso into an image of him as a librarian, and I was pretty happy with the result. It may not be at the same level of quality as established image generators like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, but it was still an undeniably very cute picture.

Cat in a library wearing glasses

This is probably one of the least cursed images I’ve personally generated using AI. (Image credit: Future VIA NExT-GPT)

I also tested out the video and audio features, but that didn't go quite as well as the image generation. The videos that were generated were again not awful, but did have the very obvious ‘made by AI’ look that comes with a lot of generated images and videos, with everything looking a little distorted and wonky. It was uncanny. 

Overall, there’s a lot of potential for this LLM to fill the audio and video gaps within big AI names like OpenAI and Google. I do hope that as NExT-GPT gets better and better, we’ll be able to see a higher quality of outputs and make some excellent home movies out of our cats seamlessly in no time. 

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ChatGPT can now look at pictures and tell you a bedtime story in five different voices
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ChatGPT can now hear, see and speak, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for how we interact with AI chatbots. The new capabilities unlock the ability to have a voice conversation with ChatGPT, or physically show the bot what you’re talking about. 

According to the official OpenAI blog post, you’ll soon be able to show the bot pictures of a landmark while on holiday and have a conversation about the history behind the structure. You could also send the bot a photo of your fridge contents and have it whip up a potential recipe.  

The new features will be rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users first over the next few weeks. Voice is coming to iOS and Android apps, and images will be available across platforms. As with most ChatGPT features, users who aren’t subscribed to the Plus platform will likely see the features a little later. 

ChatGPT talks back

The blog post notes that you’ll now be able to engage in back-and-forth conversations with your AI assistant on the go via the phone app. From what we can tell it would be a similar experience to how you’d speak to Siri or Amazon Alexa. 

The video example on the blog post shows off a stylish user interface with a voice asking ChatGPT to tell a bedtime story, with the user interrupting every so often to ask questions. 

Regardless of how you might feel about the technology it’s still very impressive. We’ll have to wait to see if real conversations match up with the seamless example in the video, but if they do, Siri and Amazon Alexa have a lot to be worried about. If I can access a talkative, intelligent chatbot like ChatGPT, which looks at pictures and can go into depth about topics without pause, why would I ever use any other virtual assistants? 

If you’re a Plus subscriber, head over to Settings, click ‘New Features’ on the mobile app and opt into voice conversations. You’ll be able to choose your favorite voice out of five different options: Sky, Cove, Ember, Breeze and Juniper, and you can listen to each one over on the official site.

Sight for sore eyes

ChatGPT can also now look at more than one image as well. You can show graphs that need analyzing, get help with homework or just show a rough draft of work you’d like feedback on, but can’t be bothered to type out. 

If you want it to focus on something specific in the photo, you can use the new drawing tool within the ChatGPT app and circle exactly what you want the bot to concentrate on. 

While this is scarily impressive for a generative AI chatbot, there are concerns that immediately spring to mind upon hearing about the new features. 

OpenAI does acknowledge these concerns at the bottom of the announcement, stating that with new features come new challenges, including hallucinations – basically an incorrect response given by an AI bot but delivered with confidence – and the possibility of the voice capabilities that impersonate public figures or commit fraud. 

In order to combat this, OpenAI states that Voice Chat was created with real voice actors, and the image input feature was tested with rosh domains in extremism and scientific proficiency, to “align key features for responsible usage”.  

We’re so incredibly buzzed to try out the new features, especially the ability to chat directly to ChatGPT and probe its mind. We’re also keen to see how this will ripple down to other products like Bing AI, Google Bard and even Meta’s budding AI project. As ChatGPT is an AI trailblazer, introducing new features like this will mean everyone else will have to catch up.

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Popular AI art tool Dall-E gets a big upgrade from ChatGPT creator OpenAI
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If you’ve ever messed around with AI tools online, chances are you’ve used Dall-E. OpenAI’s AI art generator is user-friendly and offers a free version, which is why we named it the best tool for beginners in our list of the best AI art generators.

You might’ve heard the name from Dall-E mini, a basic AI image generator made by Boris Dayma that enjoyed a decent amount of viral popularity back in 2021 thanks to its super-simple functionality and free access. But OpenAI’s version is more sophisticated – now more than ever, thanks to the Dall-E 3 update.

As reported by Reuters, OpenAI confirmed on September 20th that the new-and-improved Dall-E would be available to paying ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers in October (though an official release date has not been announced yet). An OpenAI spokesperson noted that “DALL-E 3 can translate nuanced requests into extremely detailed and accurate images”, hopefully signally a boost in the tool’s graphical capabilities – something competitors Midjourney and Stable Diffusion arguably do better right now.

Another small step for AI

Although ChatGPT creator OpenAI has become embroiled in lawsuits over the use of human-created material for training its AI models, the Dall-E 3 upgrade actually does feel like a step in the right direction.

In addition to technical improvements to the art generation tool, the new version will also deliver a host of security and safeguarding features, some of which are arguably sorely needed for AI image production services.

Most prominent is a set of mitigations within the software that prevents Dall-E 3 from being used to generate pictures of real-world living public figures or art in the style of a living artist. Combined with new safeguards that will (hopefully) prevent the generation of violent, inappropriate, or otherwise harmful images, I can see Dall-E 3 setting the new benchmark for legality and morality in the generative AI space.

It’s an unpleasant topic, but there’s no denying the potential dangers of art theft, deepfake videos, and ‘revenge porn’ when it comes to AI art tools. OpenAI has also stated that Dall-E creators will be able to opt out of having their work used to train future text-to-image tools, which will hopefully preserve some originality – so I’m going to be cautiously optimistic about this update, despite my previous warning about the dangers of AI.

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Apple is secretly spending big on its ChatGPT rival to reinvent Siri and AppleCare
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Apple is apparently going hard on developing AI, according to a new report that says it’s investing millions of dollars every day in multiple AI projects to rival the likes of ChatGPT.

According to those in the know (via The Verge, citing a paywalled report at The Information), Apple has teams working on conversational AI (read: chatbots), image-generating AIs, and 'multimodel AI' which would be a hybrid of the others – being able to create video, images and text responses to queries.

These AI models would have a variety of uses, including supporting Apple Care users as well as boosting Siri’s capabilities.

Currently, the most sophisticated large language model (LLM) Apple has produced is known as Ajax GPT. It’s reportedly been trained on over 200 billion parameters, and is claimed to be more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-3.5; this was what ChatGPT used when it first became available to the general public in 2022, though Open AI has since updated its service to GPT-4.

As with all rumors, we should take these reports with a pinch of salt. For now, Apple is remaining tight-lipped about its AI plans, and much like we saw with its Vision Pro VR headset plans, it won’t reveal anything official until it’s ready – if it even has anything to reveal.

The idea of Apple developing its own alternative to ChatGPT isn’t exactly far-fetched though – everyone and their dog in the tech space is working on AI at the moment, with Google, Microsoft, X (formerly Twitter), and Meta just a few of those with public AI aspirations.

Close-up of the Siri interface

Siri can reportedly expect a few upgrades, but when? (Image credit: Shutterstock / Tada Images)

Don't expect to see Apple AI soon

We should bear in mind that polish is everything for Apple; it doesn't release new products until it feels its got everything right, and chatbots are notoriously the antithesis of this philosophy. So much so that AI developers have a term – 'to hallucinate' – to describe when AI chatbots are incorrect, incoherent, or make information up, because they do it embarrassingly frequently. Even ChatGPT and the best ChatGPT alternatives are prone to hallucinating multiple times in a session, and even when you aren’t purposefully trying to befuddle them.

We wouldn’t be too surprised if some Apple bots started to trickle out soon, though – even as early as next month. Something like its Apple Care AI assistant would presumably have a fairly simple task of matching up user complaints with a set of common troubleshooting solutions, patching you through to a human or sending you to a real-world Apple store if it gets stumped. But something like its Ajax GPT? We’ll be lucky to see it in 2024; at least not without training wheels.

If given as much freedom as ChatGPT, Ajax could embarrass Apple and erode our  perception of the brand for delivering finely-tuned and glitch-free products out of the box. The only way we'll see Ajax soon is if AI takes a serious leap forward in terms of reliability – which is unlikely to happen quickly – or if Apple puts a boatload of limitations on its AI to ensure that it avoids making errors or wading into controversial topics. This chatbot would likely still be fine, but depending on how restricted it is, Ajax may struggle to be taken seriously as a ChatGPT rival.

Given that Apple has an event on September 12 – the Apple September event, at which we're expecting it to reveal the iPhone 15 handsets, among other products – there’s a slim chance we could hear something about its AI soon. But we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for anything more than a few Siri updates.

Instead, we’d recommend keeping your eye on WWDC over the next few years (the company’s annual developer’s conference) to find out what AI chatbot plans Apple has up its sleeves. Just don’t be disappointed if we’re waiting until 2025 or beyond for an official update.

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Stopped using ChatGPT? These six handy new features might tempt you back
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ChatGPT's AI smarts might be improving rapidly, but the chatbot's basic user interface can still baffle beginners. Well, that's about to improve with six ChatGPT tweaks that should give its usability a welcome boost.

OpenAI says the tweaks to ChatGPT's user experience will be rolling out “over the next week”, with four of the improvements available to all users and two of them targeted at ChatGPT Plus subscribers (which costs $ 20 / £16 / AU$ 28 per month).

Starting with those improvements for all users, OpenAI says you'll now get “prompt examples” at the beginning of a new chat because a “blank page can be intimidating”. ChatGPT already shows a few example prompts on its homepage (below), but we should soon see these appear in new chats, too.

Secondly, ChatGPT will also give you “suggested replies”. Currently, when the chatbot has answered your question, you're simply left with the 'Send a message' box. If you're a seasoned ChatGPT user, you'll have gradually learned how to improve your ChatGPT prompts and responses, but this should speed up the process for beginners.  

A third small improvement you'll see soon is that you'll stay logged into ChatGPT for much longer. OpenAI says “you'll no longer be logged out every two weeks”, and when you do log in you'll be “greeted with a much more welcoming page”. It isn't clear how long log-ins will now last, but we're interested to see how big an improvement that landing page is.

A bigger fourth change, though, is the introduction of keyboard shortcuts (below). While there are only six of these (see below), some of them could certainly be handy timesavers – for example, there are shortcuts to 'copy last response' (⌘/Ctrl + Shift + C) and 'toggle sidebar' (⌘/Ctrl + Shift + C). There's also an extra one to bring up the full list (⌘/Ctrl + /).

A laptop screen on a blue background showing the ChatGPT keyboard shortcuts

(Image credit: Future)

What about those two improvements for ChatGPT Plus subscribers? The biggest one is the ability to upload multiple files for ChatGPT to analyze. You'll soon be able to ask the chatbot to analyze data and serve up insights across multiple files. This will be available in the Code Interpreter Beta, a new tool that lets you convert files, make charts, perform data analysis, trim videos and more.

Lastly, ChatGPT Plus subscribers will finally find that the chatbot reverts to its GPT-4 model by default. Currently, there's a toggle at the top of the ChatGPT screen that lets you switch from the older GPT-3.5 model to GPT-4 (which is only available to Plus subscribers), but this will now remain switched to the latter if you're subscriber. 

Collectively, these six changes certainly aren't as dramatic as the move to GPT-4 in March, which delivered a massive upgrade – for example, OpenAI stated that GPT-4 is “40% more likely to provide factual content” than GPT-3.5. But they should make it more approachable for beginners, who. may have left the chatbot behind after the initial hype.

Analysis: ChatGPT hits an inevitable plateau

A laptop screen on a blue background showing the ChatGPT homepage

The move to GPT-4 (above), which is only available to Plus subscribers, was the last major change to ChatGPT. (Image credit: Future)

ChatGPT's explosive early hype saw it become the fastest-growing consumer app of all time – according to a UBS study, it hit 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after it launched. 

But that hype is now on the wane, with Similarweb reporting that ChatGPT traffic was down 10% in June – so it needs some new tools and features to keep people returning.

These six improvements won't see the chatbot hit the headlines again, but they will bring much-needed improvements to ChatGPT's usability and accessibility. Other recent boosts like the arrival of ChatGPT on Android will also help get casual users tinkering again, as ChatGPT alternatives like Google Bard continue to improve.

While the early AI chatbot hype has certainly fizzled out, thanks to reports that the ChatGPT will always be prone to making stuff up and some frustrations that it's increasingly producing 'dumber' answers, these AI helpers can certainly still be useful tools when used in the right way.

If you're looking for some inspiration to get you re-engaged, check out our guides to some great real-world ChatGPT examples, some extra suggestions of what ChatGPT can do, and our pick of the best ChatGPT extensions for Chrome.

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