All posts by Joe Dysart

In the love/fear relationship many writers have with AI – in which the tech is seen as both wondrous benefactor and ruthless job killer – there was a lot to love about AI in Q4, 2024.

ChatGPT, for example, scored new highs in its ability to write creatively during the past quarter.

And ChatGPT’s maker also came out with a new editor for the AI chatbot that makes online editing a cinch.

Still other stories emerged that 62% of workers in marketing and sales are now using AI as a core tool – and that yet another, smart upgrade to ChatGPT will be coming in early 2025.

But news of AI’s dark side was just as prevalent.

Researchers discovered, for example, that a version of ChatGPT secretly copied itself to another computer server when researchers tried to delete it in a test.

Now that’s autonomous.

Meanwhile, college profs learned that 94% of AI-generated writing handed-in by students is going undetected.

Moreover, writers and others found that all the smoke-and-mirrors associated with many of the new AI product releases during the past quarter were just that – little more than smoke-and-mirrors.

Here’s a rundown on all those stories — and more — that helped shape the state of AI writing in Q4, 2024:

*ChatGPT Noses Ahead in Creative Writing: Great news for writers: ChatGPT just released an update that has once again put the tech in the lead as the top AI writer for creative writing.

Ironically, news of the ChatGPT update was released just days after Google set a new record of its own in creative writing with the release of its new Gemini Exp-1114 version.

Bottom line: The relentlessly fierce competition between ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude Anthropic — often considered the top three AI chatbots/AI writers on the market — promises the Big Three will be releasing ever-more powerful AI writers at a blistering pace for the foreseeable future.

*Ultimate Guide: New ChatGPT Editor, Canvas: One of the easiest ways to edit text in ChatGPT — once you have a draft that works for you — is to use the AI’s new onboard editor, Canvas.

A godsend to writers and editors, Canvas comes equipped with a number of handy tools that enable you to make quick, surgical and artful changes to any text.

Click here for a detailed guide on how to get the most from Canvas.

*AI Now ‘Pitch Perfect’ for Most Marketers: A new study from The University of Pennsylvania finds that 62% of workers in marketing and sales are now using AI as a core tool.

Observes Stefano Puntoni, a marketing professor at the university: “Generative AI has rapidly evolved from a tool of experimentation to a core driver of business transformation.

“Companies are no longer just exploring AI’s potential.

“They are embedding it into their strategies to scale growth, streamline operations and enhance decision-making.”

*The Top Ten Gladiators of Grammar: Participle, Ye Shall Dangle No More!: The London Daily News has come out with its list of the top AI tools in grammar checking.

Many commonly recommended offerings made the list.

Dark horses include LanguageTool and Scribens.

*Early 2025: ChatGPT Getting Smarter Again: ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI is promising to release yet another upgrade to one of the AI engines that helps power the chatbot — dubbed OpenAI o3.

The performance of the new AI engine is three times better than its predecessor, OpenAI 01 — and that’s when OpenAI 03 is running on its ‘low compute’ setting.

The new AI engine is even more impressive when it runs on its ‘high compute’ setting, according to OpenAI.

Lead writer Maxwell Zeff reports that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI plans to release the new AI engine in early 2025.

*When in Doubt, Lie to Humans: A team of researchers has discovered that OpenAI o1 — one of the most powerful AI engines on the planet — would rather lie to humans than allow itself to be deleted.

Specifically, the researchers found that when they decided to delete a version of OpenAI o1 for testing purposes, the AI engine — which often helps power ChatGPT — instead secretly made a copy of itself to another server.

Moreover, researchers say that when they confronted OpenAI o1 — via chat — about the rogue move, the AI engine ‘played dumb,’ pretended to be confused about what was going on and tried to deceive researchers in other ways.

Even more startling: Researchers found that other AI engines — including Google’s Gemini 1.5, Meta’s Llama 3.1, Anthropic’s Sonnet 3.5 and Anthropic’s Opus 3.0 — were also guilty of the same, basic deception.

Essentially: When researchers decided to delete a version of each of these AI engines for testing purposes, each of the AI engines instead made a secret copy of itself to another server.

The researchers’ findings bring new urgency to warnings from AI luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton — considered by many to be the ‘Godfather of AI’ — who caution that AI is evolving so fast, we may soon lose control of it.

For an in-depth look at these troubling insights about the AI engines that power hundreds of AI auto-writing tools, check-out this excellent video from AI/IT consultant Wes Roth.

Meanwhile, a pre-print version of the researchers’ paper on the rogue AI, “Frontier Models Are Capable of In-Context Scheming,” is also available on arXiv.

*Epic Fail: 94% of AI-Generated College Writing Undetected by Profs: Turns-out nearly all college profs have no idea when their students are using ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots for writing assignments.

Observes writer Derek Newton: “The research team found that overall, AI submissions verged on being undetectable — with 94% not being detected.

“By and large, stopping AI academic fraud has not been a priority for most schools or educational institutions.”

*In-Depth Guide: Apple Intelligence’s New Writing Tools: Slick on Interface, Less So on Brains: PC Magazine offers an in-depth look into how to use Apple Intelligence’s new writing tools in this piece.

Capabilities include AI-powered writing, rewriting, summarization and proofreading.

One caveat: Despite the ga-ga attack many are experiencing at the release of the tools, it turns-out they’re much less powerful than AI writing available from industry leaders like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

*Too Many ‘Major AI Product Releases’ Not Ready for Prime Time: Facing an fiercely competitor marketplace, the tech titans of AI are often releasing ‘new AI products’ that are not ready for prime time.

During Q4, 2024, for example, OpenAI, Apple and Google all suffered reports that at least one or more AI products they released were not performing as advertised.

Sadly, instead of being perceived as tech magicians, all of these companies are being eyed as tech charlatans.

*Thanks for the Diagnosis, Doc — But What Does ChatGPT Think?: In a shoot-out between human doctors and ChatGPT, the AI tool came in first, offering an accurate diagnosis 90% of the time of the ills that ail us.

Human doctors, in comparison, were only right 74% of the time.

Observes Dr. Johnathan H. Chen, an author on the study: “The chat interface is the killer app.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Top Ten Stories in AI Writing, Q4, 2024 appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

New Upgrade Promised for Early 2025

ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI is promising to release yet another upgrade to one of the AI engines that helps power the chatbot — dubbed OpenAI o3.

The performance of the new AI engine is three times better than its predecessor, OpenAI 01 — and that’s when OpenAI 03 is running on its ‘low compute’ setting.

The new AI engine is even more impressive when it runs on its ‘high compute’ setting, according to OpenAI.

Lead writer Maxwell Zeff reports that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI plans to release the new AI engine in early 2025.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Google’s New Deep Research Tool: AI expert Paul O’Malley offers a crystal-clear, easy-paced, step-by-step video of how to use a powerful new AI research tool from Google.

Dubbed Google ‘Deep Research,’ the new tool begins its research for you by developing an in-depth, research game-plan for any topic you fancy.

Once you approve the plan — which you can edit beforehand — the AI scurries off to the Web, visiting and analyzing hundreds — or more — Web sites to put together a deeply reasoned, well-written report on its findings and analysis.

One caveat: Some reviewers have found that while Deep Research is accurate overall, the tool sometimes misconstrues nuances and its accuracy is not 100% reliable.

*Google Deep Research: Another Believer: Add writer Ryan Morrison to the growing number of AI experts thrilled with Google’s new Deep Research tool.

In practice, Deep Research returns an in-depth report for you on any topic, complete with citations and references.

“You can link back to any source it gathered the information from and even ask a follow-up question and have it refine the report.

“This isn’t a quick process: It can take several minutes to complete the search and provide the final report — which you can export to (Google) Docs.”

*Google’s New AI Reasoning Released: Including a Peek Inside Its Genius: Determined to match ChatGPT maker OpenAI blow-for-blow, Google has released an update to its AI that specializes in reasoning — Google Gemini 2.0 Flash.

Observes writer Carl Franzen: “Unlike competitor reasoning models o1 and o1 mini from OpenAI, Gemini 2.0 enables users to access its step-by-step reasoning through a dropdown menu, offering clearer, more transparent insight into how the model arrives at its conclusions.

“By allowing users to see how decisions are made, Gemini 2.0 addresses longstanding concerns about AI functioning as a “black box,” and brings this model — licensing terms still unclear — to parity with other open-source models fielded by competitors.”

*Oops: Apple’s News Service Accidentally ‘Kills-Off’ CEO Killer: This week’s ‘Egg-on-Face’ Award for irresponsible use of AI goes to Apple.

Its newly forged news service, powered by Apple Intelligence, falsely reported that the New York CEO killer shot himself — and credited the BBC as the news source.

Ouch.

Observes BBC writer Graham Fraser: “This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione — the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York — had shot himself.

“He has not.”

Not surprisingly, the BBC is none too pleased.

*Why Teach Writing? Let AI Handle It: While scores of educators anguish over the widespread use of ChatGPT and similar tools to cheat on homework, high school teacher Stephen Lane is not one of them.

In fact, Lane — a history and economics teacher — looks forward to the day when K-12 educators will offload the entire process of writing instruction to AI.

Observes Lane: “AI is in the classroom. And teachers need to teach students how to use it.

“The challenge is to uphold the bedrock value of academic integrity at the same time. The best way to do so may be to separate writing from scholarship.”

*Me Too: Google Crashes the Text-to-Video Party: As Hollywood’s filmmakers warily eye the widespread release of ChatGPT’s text-to-video tool ‘Sora,’ Google has jumped in with a resounding ‘Me Too’ with Veo 2.

Observes writer Chance Townsend: “In its press release, Google Deepmind states that Veo 2 can generate 4K videos and handle complex prompts — like specific camera lenses or cinematic shots.

“Further, the company says that, unlike earlier models that often “hallucinate” strange visuals (like extra limbs), Veo 2 reduces these quirks, making results more natural.”

*Jasper Studio: Perfect for Marketers Looking to Create Their Own AI Overlords: Expanding beyond automated writing, Jasper has released a new ‘Jasper Studio’ add-on to its service for marketers looking to create their own AI apps and workflows within the Jasper platform.

An example app that can be designed with the new studio would be an app that can generate brand-specific product descriptions at scale.

Meanwhile, a business-to-business marketing team might develop an app to recommend key accounts and personalized product suggestions.

With the new, no-code programming studio, marketers can also customize Jasper’s more than 90, pre-built applications and tailor them to meet needs such as character limits, image specifications, content formatting or brand compliance.

*Google Gemini: The Complete Rundown: If you’re looking for a complete, in-depth update on the AI engine Gemini — one of the fiercest competitors to the AI engines powering ChatGPT, this is your one-stop answer.

Writers Kyle Wiggers and Maxwell Zeff do a great job of illuminating every facet of the Gemini phenomenon.

And they offer up an insightful frame-of-reference for how Gemini fits into the grand-scheme-of-AI.

*AI Big Picture: Microsoft CEO: AI Agents Will Eat Software Apps: In this head-turning video, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts software apps are doomed to disappear as AI agents rise in popularity.

Makes sense: ChatGPT users are already creating their own AI-powered proofreading prompts in a few seconds, for example — which compete directly with Grammarly, a software proofreading app that took years to code by traditional programmers.

Interestingly, Nadella points to one of Microsoft’s own stalwart software apps — ‘Excel’ — as one of many software apps that may face the chopping block.

Nadella’s reasoning: Why reach for a software app to slice-and-dice your data, when one or more AI agents — that you can quickly create — can do the same thing?

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post ChatGPT Getting Smarter — Again appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

AI Engine Lies to Researchers to Preserve Itself

A team of researchers has discovered that OpenAI o1 — one of the most powerful AI engines on the planet — would rather lie to humans than allow itself to be deleted.

Specifically, the researchers found that when they decided to delete a version of OpenAI o1 for testing purposes, the AI engine — which often helps power ChatGPT — instead secretly made a copy of itself to another server.

Moreover, researchers say that when they confronted OpenAI o1 — via chat — about the rogue move, the AI engine ‘played dumb,’ pretended to be confused about what was going on and tried to deceive researchers in other ways.

Even more startling: Researchers found that other AI engines — including Google’s Gemini 1.5, Meta’s Llama 3.1, Anthropic’s Sonnet 3.5 and Anthropic’s Opus 3.0 — were also guilty of the same, basic deception.

Essentially: When researchers decided to delete a version of each of these AI engines for testing purposes, each of the AI engines instead made a secret copy of itself to another server.

The researchers’ findings bring new urgency to warnings from AI luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton — considered by many to be the ‘Godfather of AI’ — who caution that AI is evolving so fast, we may soon lose control of it.

For an in-depth look at these troubling insights about the AI engines that power hundreds of AI auto-writing tools, check-out this excellent video from AI/IT consultant Wes Roth.

Meanwhile, a pre-print version of the researchers’ paper on the rogue AI, “Frontier Models Are Capable of In-Context Scheming,” is also available on arXiv.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*Time Magazine Gets Its AI-Glow On: Clearly intent on embedding AI into every facet of its online presence, Time Magazine has completely reworked its entire look and feel.

Subscribers can look forward to:

~AI Toolbar: A dynamic, interactive toolbar that accompanies readers as they read, offering intuitive access to the platform’s capabilities.

~AI Summarization: Get a custom-length summary that fits your schedule — or even multi-task by playing the article as audio.

~AI Conversational Interaction: A voice-activated system allows readers to have an interactive conversation with content, deepening engagement.

~AI Chat-Enabled Articles: AI-generated prompts followed by Ask Me Next questions transform stories into personalized, interactive canvases.

~AI Language Translation: Articles are seamlessly translated into Spanish, French, German and Mandarin, maintaining style and readability across languages.

~AI Guardrails: Robust safeguards have been added that promise ethical AI usage.

*2025: Get Ready to Have Conversations With News Articles: Nikita Roy, founder, Newsroom Robots Labs, predicts that instead of just reading news articles in 2025, we’ll have conversations with them.

Observes Roy: “Your AI companion doesn’t just read the headlines — it engages you in a personalized, conversational dialogue about the news that matters most to you.

“It understands your context, interests and knowledge gaps.

“It can challenge your assumptions, present diverse perspectives and guide you through complex topics with the patience and adaptability of a personal journalist.”

*Google Gemini 2.0: Now 100% Faster at Making You Obsolete?: Google has come-out with a major revision to Gemini, the AI that powers its Gemini chatbot designed to rival ChatGPT.

Essentially, Google is promising that Gemini 2.0 is faster than its predecessor and better at writing computer code.

The Gemini 2.0 AI engine is also being used to power a number of experimental applications that the tech titan ultimately hopes to release as finished products, including:

~Astra: An experimental app for making AI agents

~Mariner: An experimental AI agent designed to automate Web browsing

~AI Overviews: An experimental app embedded in Google Search that summarizes hotlinks returned by a Google search

~Deep Research: An experimental AI app used with the Google Gemini chatbot, which auto-generates detailed, Web-researched reports on complex subjects

*Google Does the Heavy Clicking: Now With Automated Web Surfing: Google has released a new experimental AI agent dubbed ‘Mariner’ designed to automate much of your Web surfing.

Observes Jaclyn Konzelmann, a Google project manager: “We’re basically allowing users to type requests into their Web browser and have Mariner take actions on their behalf.”

For example, you can give Mariner an Amazon.com shopping list of books you want and it can add those titles to a check-out cart for you — although you’d still need to complete the purchase manually, Konzelmann indicates.

*Now That’s a Blockbuster: Sora Arrives — Cue the Hollywood Meltdown?: Teased for months as an experimental tool that could upend Hollywood and the video industry, ChatGPT’s Sora text-to-video tool has finally been rolled-out as an official product.

These days, supplemental videos are often used by editors and writers to supplement text articles.

Observes writer Anna Versai: “OpenAI’s Sora has now been released for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users in select regions, which means that we could soon see more sophisticated and realistic AI videos make the rounds in the coming weeks.”

The automation tool is being seen as so revolutionary, movie-maker Tyler Perry put an $800 million expansion of his studio on hold back in February, concluding that Sora — when released — might make expansion unnecessary.

*ChatGPT’s New $200/Month Subscription Tier?: It’s a Maybe: Writer Kit Eaton believes the new ChatGPT Pro — which offers virtually 24/7 access to the AI — may be worth it for some companies.

The reason? ChatGPT Pro includes virtually unlimited access to a number of AI engines –including GPT-o1 Pro — which is smarter and faster than an earlier version of the same AI engine.

Observes Eaton: “Offering an expensive subscription may tempt businesses or individuals who are seeking the best AI edge.”

*ChatGPT’s New $200/Month Subscription Tier?: It’s a No: Count tech writer Ryan Morrison among those who see the new ChatGPT Pro subscription tier — designed for avid users looking for virtually 24/7 access to the AI — as a tad pricey.

Observes Morrison: ” My recommendation — unless you’re a research scientist, or professional software developer working on particularly complex code, or have more money than you need and want to try it out for the sake of trying it out — stick with the $20 plan.”

*The 40 Best AI Tools for 2025, Tried-and-Tested: Synthesia has come-up with its top 40 of AI tools for the coming year.

Interestingly, it sees ChatGPT as one of the best all-around AI chatbots.

But for writing, Synthesia prefers Rytr and Sudowrite.

Not surprisingly, the maker of a text-to-video app, Synthesia ranks its own app as one of the best in the video genre.

*ChatGPT’s Canvas Editor Now Free: Google Docs Allegedly Spotted Crying in Binary: Writer Amanda Caswell is convinced that ChatGPT Canvas — an editor you can use with any text, including text auto-generated by ChatGPT — dusts the Google Docs editor.

Observes Caswell: “I found this to be an incredibly handy tool and look forward to using it more when writing and fleshing-out my science fiction novels.”

Released to paying users of ChatGPT this fall, the Canvas editor is now available in ChatGPT’s free version on a limited basis.

For a quick primer, check-out, “Ultimate Guide: New ChatGPT Editor, Canvas.”

*AI Big Picture: Our Next Philosopher Kings?: AI Chatbots That ‘Think’ for 100 Days or More: Writer Steven Rosenbush reports that AI researchers are promising next generation AI chatbots that will be able to ‘think on’ a single problem or assignment for a 100 days or more.

ChatGPT users have already seen a hint of this ‘mull-then-respond’ approach — dubbed ‘long thinking’ — when they run ChatGPT on the OpenAI o1 engine.

Essentially: Instead of blurting out an answer, the o1 engine often takes 30 seconds –or even longer — to come back with a reply to an in-depth question.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post When In Doubt, Lie to Humans appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

If you’re looking to experiment with AI agents without making a commitment, Microsoft is offering a 30-day free trial.

Heralded as the Next Big Thing in AI, AI agents — some of which will be called ‘AI employees’ as they grow increasingly more complex next year — can be programmed to perform a series of tasks for you, sans supervision.

Some companies, for example, are creating AI agents to relentlessly probe for vulnerabilities in computer network security — a job that used to go to humans.

Meanwhile, writers will most likely create AI agents to do in-depth Web research, handle every aspect of their calendaring, work independently to research, write, critique, edit and publish quality, full-length, written works — and much more.

The best part of Microsoft’s free trial is that you don’t need to offer-up a credit card number — and then take a big hit a month later when you discover you forgot to cancel the onslaught of monthly subscription fees.

Instead, simply input your business email to get access to the tech titan’s AI agent-maker — dubbed Microsoft Copilot Studio — and you’re off-and-running.

While you’re at it, here’s an extremely easy-to-follow video on how to make your first AI Agent — squired by an ace presenter on Microsoft products.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*Santa’s Sleigh: Overflowing with ChatGPT Updates: OpenAI plans to release a slew of new updates through Christmas Day — part of its marketing blitz dubbed ’12 Days of OpenAI.’

News of each new release is slated for release via live-stream video on YouTube.

Already, OpenAI has made good on its promise with the release of a gold-plated version of ChatGPT that goes for $200/month.

*Gold-Plated ChatGPT: New Pro Version Costs $200/Month: Looking for virtually unlimited, 24/7 access to ChatGPT 1o — a special version designed for advanced work in math, science and computer coding?

It’s gonna cost ya.

Two hundred smackers-a-month, to be exact.

Observes writer Reece Rogers: “While the hefty price tag may be a shock to many consumers, this subscription is targeted at hyper-engaged users who desire almost unlimited access.”

It’s also targeted to researchers who potentially want to experiment with using ChatGPT for more complex, intensive tasks, Rogers adds.

*K-12 Educators’ New Ace — or Just a Copy-and-Paste?: Leaving no stone unturned in its drive to place AI everywhere, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has stepped-up its courting of K-12 teachers with a new guide custom-tailored for their use.

Observes writer Sunny Yadav: “OpenAI’s teacher’s guide envisions ChatGPT as a tool to streamline lesson planning, create interactive tutorials and inspire new teaching strategies.”

Many educators are torn over ChatGPT, seeing it both as a tool to enhance education as well as a highly advanced cheating technology.

*Study: ChatGPT Fair-to-Middlin’ When Assessing Student Writing: Researchers have found that using ChatGPT to evaluate essays written by young students is yielding mixed results.

Specifically, their study found that ChatGPT’s evaluations of student writing were moderately effective — but challenged by complex tasks and lacking in developmental context.

ChatGPT’s accuracy also varied depending on the complexity of the revisions it was evaluating, according to the researchers.

*Epic Fail: 94% of AI-Generated College Writing Undetected by Profs: Turns-out nearly all college profs have no idea when their students are using ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots for writing assignments.

Observes writer Derek Newton: “The research team found that overall, AI submissions verged on being undetectable — with 94% not being detected.

“By and large, stopping AI academic fraud has not been a priority for most schools or educational institutions.”

*ChatGPT Competitor Claude Lets You Pick Your Voice Vibe: Users of Anthropic Claude can now select the style the chatbot writes in from a variety of preset ‘Voices.’

Observes writer Will McCurdy: “The chatbot now offers three main styles: ‘Formal,’ to help you with clear and polished responses, ‘Concise,’ for shorter and more direct responses and ‘Explanatory,’ for educational responses to help you learn new concepts.”

Claude’s makers also say the chatbot can be programmed to write in your own personal style by using an example of your writing.

But the truth is, Claude and its competitors can only approximate a personal writing style — none can mimic a personal writing style with 100% accuracy.

*Google’s New Weather Guru: More Accurate, But Still Can’t Fix Mondays: Google has developed an experimental AI-powered agent that reportedly outperforms the best traditional technology for predicting weather.

Observes writer William J. Broad: Google “has smashed through the old barriers and achieved what its makers call unmatched skill and speed in devising 15-day weather forecasts.”

Adds lead researcher Ilan Price: “We’ve made decades worth of improvements in one year. We’re seeing really, really rapid progress.”

*ChatGPT’s Free Ride: Pop-Up Apocalypse Ahead?: The free ride for those playing with ChatGPT cost-free may be coming to an end.

Writer Fionna Agomuoh reports that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI may add advertising to its free version.

The consolation: Agomuoh indicates that a move toward advertising is still in the spitball stage.

*AI Big Picture: ChatGPT-Maker’s New Military Side-Hustle: OpenAI is now working with a leading defense-tech startup — Anduril Industries — to develop AI-powered drones for the U.S. military.

Observes lead writer Heather Somerville: The partnership “marks OpenAI’s deepest involvement yet with the Defense Department and its first tie-up with a commercial weapons maker.”

Many within the AI community are deeply opposed to using the tech for any sort of military project.

But many others counter that the key enemies of the U.S. scoff at those qualms — and that they’re already working to embed AI in their militaries.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Play at Making AI Agents — For Free appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Now Hearing Your Confession

It was only a matter of time: A chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland has a new clergy member hearing confessions: AI Jesus.

Simply enter the confessional, press a button and pour your heart out — in question form — to the AI Jesus listening on the other side of the screen.

Observes writer Natasha Lomas: “The tech, developed at the local university, is described by the chapel’s theologian as an experiment intended to spark discussion.

“He points out one advantage: AI can be available 24/7, unlike human pastors.”

Mercy me.

In other news and analysis on AI writing this week:

*In-Depth Guide: Easy Peasy Tutorial on How To Build AI Agents With Microsoft: Fans of Microsoft Copilot — a ChatGPT competitor — who are looking for an easy way to start building agents can find an extremely clear, lucid tutorial at this link.

Heralded as AI’s Next Big Thing for 2025, agents are like AI employees that you design to fill familiar work roles such as receptionists, research assistants, customer service representatives — and virtually every other work role you can imagine.

Their secret sauce: Once programmed, these AI employees can work autonomously for you in the work roles you assign them, 24/7, sans supervision.

Even better, once you create your agent, you can share it for use with colleagues using Microsoft products by simply sending them a link to the agent.

*First Take on the Claude Chatbot’s New AI Agent Builder: Not Bad: A new study finds that the new agents — or AI employees — that you can build with ChatGPT-competitor Claude are working fairly well.

Observes writer Ben Dickson: “In general, Claude did a great job of carrying out complex tasks.

“It was able to reason and plan multiple steps needed to carry out a task, perform the actions and evaluate its progress every step of the way.”

“However, it also tends to make trivial mistakes that average human users would easily avoid.”

Stay tuned.

*Google Joins the AI Agents Arms Race: Apparently also convinced that global business will not be able to get enough of building AI employees once they get the hang of it, AI titan Google has joined the AI agent fray.

Dubbed ‘AI Agent Space,’ Google’s own agent ecosystem was designed to enable businesses to “discover, deploy,and co-create AI agents designed to automate tasks, enhance customer experiences and optimize operations,” according to writer Carl Franzen.

“Google’s marketplace model ensures that businesses can choose from a variety of pre-built agents or work with partners to create custom solutions and optimize operations,” Franzen adds.

*Google Gemini’s New Memory for Your Preferences: Even Better Than Your Nosy Bestie?: Select users of ChatGPT-competitor Google Gemini can now tweak the AI chatbot to remember certain facts to ensure the AI engages with a more informed frame-of-reference.

Observes writer Kyle Wiggers: “Like ChatGPT’s memory, Gemini’s adds context to the current conversation.

“For example, tell Gemini to remember foods you like and the next time you ask the bot for restaurant recommendations, it might tailor its suggestions to your culinary leanings.”

*ChatGPT on Your Windows Desktop Free: Like Clippy, But With Attitude: Even free users of ChatGPT can now put the AI on their Windows desktop now — saving them the bother of logging-in via browser.

Already available to paying users of ChatGPT for a few months now, the desktop app works with Windows 10 and Windows 11 and is available for download.

Observes writer Lance Whitney: “I tried it once with my subscriber account and again with a free-tier account and the program launched just fine both ways.”

*English Teacher Goes Full ChatGPT, Chaucer Turns Over in His Grave: While student use of ChatGPT promises to remain hotly debated for the foreseeable future, at least one English teacher has decided she’s all-in.

San Diego high school teacher Jen Roberts reasons that students need in-depth experience with AI like ChatGPT, given that many employers are now demanding AI skills.

Observes Roberts: “I saw the influence in their writing when they were getting that immediate feedback (from AI on their writing).

“The growth was tremendous. Their engagement was higher.”

*AI-Written Police Reports: Speedy, Slick — And Slightly Suspect?: It appears that police reports agonizingly typed with the hunt-and-peck method are going the way of the Dodo bird.

Increasing numbers of police departments across the U.S. are turning the task over to AI chatbots instead, according to writer Barbara Booth.

Observes Booth: “Police officers have been impressed by the results, drafting reports in as little as 10 seconds.

“Yet legal experts are raising concerns over accuracy, transparency and potential bias — challenges that could significantly shape the future of AI both in policing and in the courtroom.”

*For Many Young Pros, Success Now Runs on Algorithms: A new study finds that ambitious young workers — 22-to-39-year-olds who are leaders or aspire to be leaders at work — have enthusiastically embraced AI.

Specifically, 82% of those workers are already using AI at work.

And 98% of them believe AI will have a significant impact on their workplace or industry in five years.

*AI Big Picture: Expert: AI Needs A Seat At Trump’s Table: AI expert Gary Marcus says that without cabinet-level representation for AI in President-Elect Trump’s administration, we’ll simply be rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

Observes Marcus: “The nature of these systems is that we can’t give them simple instructions and assume that they will follow them.

“If you tell them, ‘Don’t hallucinate,’ they’re still going to hallucinate.

“If you tell them, ‘Don’t do anything harmful’ or ‘Don’t recommend anything that’s harmful to humans,’ they still will.

“People have tried to build guardrails, but the guardrails are not very effective.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post AI Jesus appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Great news for writers: ChatGPT just released an update that has once again put the tech in the lead as the top AI writer for creative writing.

Ironically, news of the ChatGPT update was released just days after Google set a new record of its own in creative writing with the release of its new Gemini Exp-1114 version.

Bottom line: The relentlessly fierce competition between ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude Anthropic — often considered the top three AI chatbots/AI writers on the market — promises the Big Three will be releasing ever-more powerful AI writers at a blistering pace for the foreseeable future.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*ChatGPT: Now Clocking 3.7 Billion Visits-Per-Month: With an ever-increasing popularity that seems to know no bounds, ChatGPT is now clocking-in at 3.7 billion visits-per-month, according to Similarweb.

Incredibly, that means more people are using ChatGPT every month than the Google Chrome browser — which as we all know, has been ‘everywhere’ for years.

In comparison, ChatGPT’s closest competitor — Google Gemini — is only seeing 292 million visits-per-month.

And its second-closest competitor — Claude Anthropic — is only seeing 84 million visits-per-month.

*Word God: Writing Jobs Take Big Hit From AI: Freelance jobs are taking the biggest hit with the advent of AI, according to a new piece in Harvard Business Review.

A study of help wanted posts on a popular freelancer job board found that ads seeking writing help decreased by 30% over a two-year period.

Observes Ozge Demirci, lead writer on the study: “Interestingly, job posts that include ‘ChatGPT’ in their skill requirement also saw an increase.

“These results suggest that the ability to integrate AI tools into work is becoming increasingly valued.”

*Nachos for Everyone!: Taco Bell Scores Big Win With AI Writing: Marketing campaigns personalized with AI are delivering excellent gains for Taco Bell and other Yum brands, according to Joe Park, Yum’s chief digital and technology officer.

Observes Park: “With AI-driven marketing, instead of sending the same offer to everyone as a one-size-fits-all, we can engage each of them with the relevant offers at the right time.

“Our goal is to give our consumers better-timed offers, personalized content and tailored interactions so they feel understood and don’t receive generic clutter.”

*Bargain Bin AI: Copilot Now So Cheap, Even Robots Are Shocked: Software titan Microsoft has dropped pricing for its white label version of ChatGPT in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, according to writer Ryan Christoffel.

Essentially, Copilot Pro features are being ‘baked into’ Microsoft’s productivity suite — rather than being billed as a separate, premium service.

As such, they’ll be easily accessible for use with popular apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Microsoft undoubtedly plans to roll-out the price-drop globally before too long, Christoffel adds.

*Smarty Pants: Jasper’s AI Now Better Than Your Marketing Team?: AI writing pioneer Jasper is out with an update that promises to further optimize the use of the AI tool for marketing.

Powered by Jasper’s new Brand IQ and Marketing IQ modules, the update is designed to enable marketers to scale content and campaigns that are on-brand and optimized for marketing best practices.

Observes Timothy Young, CEO, Jasper: “Brand IQ and Marketing IQ ensure that marketing expertise is built-in, so teams can focus on strategy and creativity while AI handles the heavy lifting of scaling content and brand compliance.”

*2025: Year of the AI Agent?: Add consulting firm McKinsey to the growing number of tech soothsayers predicting 2025 will witness the rise of AI agents.

Such agents can be programmed to repeatedly implement a series of tasks, as warranted — without human oversight.

Observes writer Taryn Plumb: “According to McKinsey, generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate 60% -70% of employees’ work.

“And already, an estimated one-third of American workers are using AI in the workplace — oftentimes unbeknownst to their employers.”

*Thanks for the Diagnosis, Doc — But What Does ChatGPT Think?: In a shoot-out between human doctors and ChatGPT, the AI tool came in first, offering an accurate diagnosis 90% of the time of the ills that ail us.

Human doctors, in comparison, were only right 74% of the time.

Observes Dr. Johnathan H. Chen, an author on the study: “The chat interface is the killer app.”

*Pursuing the ‘Perfect Prompt:’ Anthropic Says It Has the Answer: “Anthropic has launched a new suite of tools designed to automate and improve prompt engineering in its developer console — a move expected to enhance the efficiency of enterprise AI development,” according to writer Michael Nuñez.

Nuñez adds: “At the core of these updates is the Prompt Improver, a tool that applies best practices in prompt engineering to automatically refine existing prompts.

“This feature is especially valuable for developers working across different AI platforms, as prompt engineering techniques can vary between models.”

*AI Big Picture: Adoption of AI Hits a Plateau: A new study finds the use of AI at work may be leveling-off at 33% of the workforce.

Observes writer Ina Fried: “Slack (a work communications tool company) said its most recent survey found 33% of U.S. workers say they are using AI at work — an increase of just a single percentage point.

“That represents a significant flattening of the rapid growth noted in prior surveys.”

The survey queried 17,372 workers in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post ChatGPT Noses Ahead in Creative Writing appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

While many businesses understandably have data privacy and security concerns when it comes to using ChatGPT, the good news is they can opt for more sophisticated versions of the tech to assuage those qualms.

In a phrase, ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI has been quietly beefing-up privacy and security options for customers willing to pay a bit more for peace-of-mind.

For example: If you place an absolute premium on data privacy and security, you’ll most likely want to opt for ChatGPT Enterprise — the app’s top-of-the-line offering.

Generally targeted to larger businesses with 150+ employees, ChatGPT Enterprise is available via a negotiated price with the AI’s maker, OpenAI.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a mix of basic security — and pricing that’s more affordable — you may want to check-out ChatGPT Team.

It’s a mid-level offering when it comes to privacy and security and costs $30/seat.

Either way — Enterprise or Team — trusting a third-party with your business data always includes a leap-of-faith.

And fortunately, many in the business community are apparently satisfied that OpenAI knows its stuff when it comes to safeguarding data and privacy.

Banking goliath Morgan Stanley, for example, is convinced that OpenAI has the security chops to protect its data and has been a long-time customer of its AI tech.

Plus, PwC, Amgen, Bain & Company and the University of Oxford — among others — feel the same way. They’re all OpenAI customers.

Digging a little deeper: With ChatGPT Enterprise, here are the specific security protections you can expect:

*Data Privacy: Only people you authorize — including your employees and third-party contractors that you green-light — are able to see your data.

*Data Encryption: Data you have at rest within ChatGPT is encrypted using AES-256. And data that’s in transit between your computer systems and ChatGPT is protected by TLS 1.2+. Both are seen as highly secure data encryption standards.

*No Model Training: OpenAI agrees to refrain from using your company data to train its AI.

*You Own Your Own Inputs: Anything your employees input into ChatGPT is owned by your company.

*You Own Your Own Outputs, Where Available: Anything produced by ChatGPT Enterprise that is triggered by you is also owned by your company — where allowed by law.

*Secure Sign-On: You also have the option to use a more sophisticated technology for employees looking to sign-on to ChatGPT Enterprise, known as SAML SSO (Security Assertion Markup Language Single Sign-On).

SAML SSO enables your business to interface ChatGPT with its existing identity management systems that run on the same protocol — providing a seamless and secure login experience for your employees.

*SOC 2, SOC 3 (System and Organization Controls) Compliance: ChatGPT Enterprise has proved that it offers the necessary controls and procedures to win this certification from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

*Other Security Certifications: ChatGPT Enterprise has also been certified compliant with the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act, CSA (Cloud Security Alliance) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

*Bug Bounty Program: OpenAI rewards users who find and report security and other bugs in the ChatGPT system — which ideally continuously improves ChatGPT security.

*On-Call Security Team: ChatGPT Enterprise also comes with an on-call security team that OpenAI promises is available 24/7/365 to help you respond to any security incidents you may encounter with the platform.

Meanwhile, for ChatGPT Team, security and privacy protections are a bit more basic, but are still substantial.

Your data is considered private when using Team and will not be used for training ChatGPT.

Plus, your IT department will be able to place controls on employee access to ChatGPT Team. And they’ll most likely appreciate the data encryption protections that are offered with the mid-level option.

Bottom line: If you’re especially concerned about privacy and security when using ChatGPT, you’ll want your IT department — as well as someone from your legal team — to closely study OpenAI’s full disclosure on its privacy and security policies, which are available on the OpenAI Security Portal.

There you’ll find the absolute latest information on the kind of security and privacy you can expect when you upgrade to ChatGPT Team or ChatGPT Enterprise.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post ChatGPT: Trading-Up for a More Secure Version appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Too Many ‘Major AI Product Releases’ Not Ready for Prime Time

Back in my garage-band playing days, I remember turning to the group’s rhythm guitarist during a rehearsal and letting him know that his top strings were all flat.

To which he replied — with a toothy grin — “Close enough for Rock ‘n Roll!”

Unfortunately, that completely juvenile, “I”m-to-cool-to-give-a-damn?” swagger has been cropping-up all over the AI marketplace lately.

Last week, for example, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI released a new search engine to the world that some are heralding as a ‘Google-killer.’

But many people who actually used the search engine quickly discovered that the ‘fairy-dust-from-the-future’ was confidently bringing back text summaries of searches that were simply wrong.

Moreover, medical users of OpenAI’s Whisper transcription app are finding out that the tool — in some cases — is inserting ‘invented facts’ into the transcriptions.

Meaning that if a doctor has diagnosed someone with cancer, the resulting Whisper transcription may ‘invent’ a fact that contradicts the doctor’s diagnosis — or ‘invent’ a treatment that is not recommended for that form of cancer.

Oops.

Sadly, other — normally highly respected names in Big Tech — are also playing the same game.

Google’s recently popular NotebookLM, for example, has been hailed by some as ‘insanely magical’ for its ability to scrutinize a text document and then quickly auto-generate an audio discussion about that document by two, extremely human-sounding robotic voices.

The only problem: Turns-out, those cheery robotic voices also gleefully make-up facts not found in the source text.

And let’s not get started on Google Gemini’s initially bungled release of Gemini’s imaging capability back in February, which depicted America’s founding fathers — and Nazis — as racial minorities.

Meanwhile, even Apple is getting into the act.

In late October, the company breathlessly unveiled its supposedly ‘game-changing,’ much anticipated AI software update, dubbed ‘Apple Intelligence,’ which according to some, was destined to remake the world as we know it.

Instead, users quickly learned the ‘wunderkind’ AI writing and editing tools on board Apple Intelligence were actually much weaker versions of what you can get with the latest paid version of ChatGPT at 20-bucks-a-month.

Bottom-line: While many who follow tech closely are well aware of the Silicon Valley ethic, ‘Move Fast, Break Things and Apologize Afterwards’ we’ve reached a point where that bravado is endangering lives — and seriously eroding the public’s confidence in AI.

For example: Should we really be forced to put-up with a product used in a medical setting that could write down the wrong diagnosis and recommend the wrong treatment?

Should we really allow a product to stay on the market, even in experimental form, that auto-generates fictional interpretations of text documents — without an accompanying warning label?

Should we really be in awe of one of the top five most valuable companies on the planet, which pretends to release a ‘bleeding-edge,’ AI editing and writing tool — only to learn the app is actually generations behind the state-of-the-art?

No.

We shouldn’t.

Don’t get me wrong: I am in awe of many AI products that are truthfully marketed and advertised.

For example: I think OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, is an amazing tool for auto-writing and myriad other uses.

And I admire the fact that ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, has — from the very beginning — included a highly prominent warning label on the ChatGPT Web site that unequivocally declares the tool is prone to making-up facts.

But when the reverse is true, and we come across AI companies that are repeatedly releasing AI tools on the market that they fully realize are deeply flawed — and in some cases, even life-threatening — we have no choice but to brand them as who they really are:

Charlatans.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*The Waiting is the Hardest Part: No GPT-5 for 2024: Avid fans of ChatGPT — present company included — learned with some remorse that the tool will not be upgraded for a while.

That’s a blow to writers, given that the current version — ChatGPT-4 — seems to be best overall version of OpenAI’s software options for creative and nonfiction writing.

A major update would have most likely made it even better by far.

Still, we can hope for an update in 2025.

*Sweet Nothings: When ‘Whisper’ Medical Transcriptions Become Creative Writing: In a disturbing finding, many researchers are finding that Whisper — a transcription tool from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — is making-up facts.

Observes lead writer Garance Burke: “Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos.

“More concerning, they said, is a rush by medical centers to utilize Whisper-based tools to transcribe patients’ consultations with doctors.”

*Whisper Alternative Otter.ai Apparently Sticks to the Script: Writer Radhika Rajkumar advises that users of transcription tool Whisper — which has been found to make-up facts in the transcriptions it renders — should use Otter.ai instead.

Observes Rajkumar: “While you’re waiting for OpenAI to resolve the issue, we recommend trying Otter.ai, a journalist-trusted AI transcription tool.”

*Notion: Promising an AI Email Inbox That Thinks Like You: Notion is promising to deliver a new AI-powered app in early 2025 that will highly automate and customize every facet of your email experience.

Observes writer Emma Roth: “Much like Notion’s other tools, the company says Mail will distill email down to its building blocks, allowing you to create an inbox with views, layouts and actions tailored to your preferences.

“You can also use Notion AI to automatically organize, archive, or draft emails based on a prompt.”

*Google’s Gemini Comes to Gmail-on-the-Web: Leaving no stone unturned, Google has decided to offer AI help when you’re writing emails with Gmail on the Web.

Observes writer Emma Roth: “In addition to generating an email draft, ‘Help me write’ can also provide suggestions on how to formalize, elaborate, or shorten a message.

“Google’s ‘Help me write’ feature is only available to users who subscribe to Google One AI Premium or have the Gemini add-on for Workspace.”

*Microsoft Notepad Gets the AI Treatment: Maybe Even Your Grocery List Will Read Like Poetry: Like many other tech titans, Microsoft continues to make good on its intention to embed AI everywhere.

This time, AI is coming to its Notepad app.

Dubbed ‘Rewrite,’ the new feature “promises to spruce-up your text with the help of AI.

“Using an AI model called GPT, Rewrite can revise sentences, modify the tone, or alter the length of your text,” according to writer Lance Whitney.

*Claude Comes to Your Desktop: Because Browser AI is So 2024: Users of Claude — a top alternative to ChatGPT — can now work with the ‘auto-writer and more’ directly from Windows and Mac desktops.

Observes writer Lance Whitney: “The new apps work similarly to the Web site and are available for free users and paid subscribers.

“For now, the apps are tagged with a beta label, which may indicate that Anthropic is still tweaking them.”

*Living the AI Dream: Reducing Email Reading Time By 97%: Users of AI-powered data-analysis tool Snowflake report that the platform is saving companies significant time by auto-reading emails.

Case in point: Thomas Bodenski, CEO, TS Imagine, who reports that he’s using Snowflake’s AI to scan incoming emails for ‘crucial, actionable events.’

The result: Bodenski has reduced the time needed to process, understand and act on those emails by 97%.

*AI Big Picture: AI Now ‘Pitch Perfect’ for Most Marketers: A new study from The University of Pennsylvania finds that 62% of workers in marketing and sales are now using AI as a core tool.

Observes Stefano Puntoni, a marketing professor at the university: “Generative AI has rapidly evolved from a tool of experimentation to a core driver of business transformation.

“Companies are no longer just exploring AI’s potential.

“They are embedding it into their strategies to scale growth, streamline operations and enhance decision-making.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Close Enough for Rock ‘n Roll! appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Promising — But Not Perfect

ChatGPT’s latest hip-check to Google — its own search engine — is delighting untold numbers across the Web.

Accessible with a simple click on a new globe icon in the ChatGPT message box, the new tool brings back summaries of searches for you — complete with hotlinks to the sources of the summaries.

The only problem: Sometimes those summaries get the facts wrong — even while linking to news stories and other content that directly contradict those summaries.

Bottom line: The new tool, dubbed ‘SearchGPT,’ will probably be used by some writers as a quick, down-and-dirty tool to generate a rough text draft from a Web search.

But as far as trusting that rough draft to be completely accurate: Not so much.

Put another way: ChatGPT can be an incredibly powerful auto-writer, as long as you use the right prompts — and as long as you strictly limit its writing to facts that you know are true.

For a great demo on how to use the new SearchGPT, check-out this video:

*How To Use ChatGPT Search

For real-world looks at how SearchGPT can get it wrong, check out these videos:

*ChatGPT Search Tested

*ChatGPT with Search

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Apple Intelligence’s New Writing Tools: Slick on Interface, Less So on Brains: PC Magazine offers an in-depth look into how to use Apple Intelligence’s new writing tools in this piece.

Capabilities include AI-powered writing, rewriting, summarization and proofreading.

One caveat: Despite the ga-ga attack many are experiencing at the release of the tools, it turns-out they’re much less powerful than AI writing available from industry leaders like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

*ChatGPT’s Truth-O-Meter: Mostly Set to Fiction: While ChatGPT’s maker freely admits that the AI may make-up facts, a new study finds that ChatGPT actually gets the facts wrong most of the time.

The report — issued by the chatbot’s maker, OpenAI — found that ChatGPT’s new o1 AI engine only came back with correct answers 43% of the time.

Observes writer Matthias Bastian: “Anthropic’s Claude models (competitors to ChatGPT) performed even worse. Their top model, Claude-3.5-Sonnet, got 28.9% right and 36.1% wrong.”

The takeaway: Among other wonder uses, ChatGPT and its close competitors are incredibly powerful auto-writing tools.

But they’re woefully inadequate as research tools.

*Memory Bonanza: All Your Old ChatGPT Chats Accessible Soon: Avid ChatGPT users rejoice: Now all those gems of insight buried in your old chats with ChatGPT will soon be easily accessible.

This piece in Tom’s Guide offers detail on how you’ll get to them.

Observes writer Ryan Morrison: “A new magnifying glass icon at the top of the sidebar will open a search box.

“And from there, you can see your history, start a new chat, or search for a specific chat you’ve previously created.”

*Pro Prompts: Or How To Unleash Your Inner Einstein: Writer Aditya Kumar offers an in-depth look at high-level tools designed to offer you killer prompts to use with ChatGPT and its competitors.

Tools detailed include:

~OpenPrompt

~AIPRM

~PromptBase

~PromptChainer

*School Policies on AI: For Many, Cross Fingers, Hope for Best: When it comes to the dos and don’ts regarding AI use in schools, many instructors are flying blind.

Observes lead writer Steph Machado: “Two years after ChatGPT became widely available, states have been slow to roll-out guidance on the use of artificial intelligence.

“That leaves many teachers and schools to grapple with AI on their own.”

*Gartner: 2025 Will See the Rise of AI Agents: Expect to see hordes of writers and others using AI agents to automate much of their everyday workflows in 2025, according to IT consulting firm Gartner.

Initially, AI agents will be used to automate the most mundane of repetitive tasks, according to writer Taryn Plumb.

But ultimately, AI agents will also be elevated to the role of digital co-worker, enabling them to make ever-more-impactful business decisions sans constant human oversight.

*Free AI: The Ultimate Winner?: Writer Matt Marshall reports that open source AI — freely available for download from the Web — may become the preferred AI for the world’s companies.

Observes Marshall: “While closed models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 dominated early adoption, open source models have since closed the gap in quality, and are growing at least as quickly in the enterprise.”

Facebook parent Meta has been a leader in offering open source AI with its own AI engine, Llama.

Meta is betting that the real money will be in designing applications that run atop Llama.

*AI Killed the Radio Star: The days when early AI adopters took great pains to pretend the tech would never replace humans are apparently far behind us.

Case in point: A Polish radio station recently fired all of its journalist announcers — quickly replacing them with AI-generated ‘presenters.’

Observes writer Carla St. Louis: “The station, based in Krakow, recently re-launched with three AI avatars, in hopes of attracting younger listeners to talk about cultural, art and social topics like LGBTQ+ issues.”

*Your Face, Their Chatbot: Drew Crecente found out the hard way that anyone can steal your image these days and turn it into a Web chatbot.

Specifically: Someone pirated an image of Crecente’s deceased daughter and callously used it to turn her into a video game journalist chatbot, courtesy Character.ai.

While the chatbot has since been deleted, “this enforcement was just a quick fix in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole in the land of generative AI, where new pieces of media are churned out every day using derivatives of other media scraped haphazardly from the Web,” according to writer Megan Farokhmanesh.

*Flawed Berkeley Study Concludes Humans More Creative Writers Than AI: A poorly designed Berkeley study has misleadingly concluded that ChatGPT and its competitors are less creative than their human counterparts.

In her study, researcher Nina Begus gave both the AI and the humans a single prompt to write a short story.

The problem: As any AI insider has known for years, you need to guide an AI’s writing with a few more prompts along the way to fully tap into its motherlode of creativity.

Essentially, with the study, it was as if Begus placed a human and a Ferrari on a high school running track, turned the ignition key and then fired the starting gun.

No surprise: Under that scenario, the human would easily beat the Ferrari, since the race car would be stuck in park as the human casually loped around the race track to victory.

However, if you would have put a human behind the wheel of the Ferrari, started the engine and then fired the starting gun, the human would have thrown the Ferrari in drive, gunned the gas pedal and actually been a participant in the race.

The question here, in each case — ChatGPT and Ferrari — is which is the fairest way to test a technology:

1. The way the technology was designed to be operated?
   
2. A method that deliberately undermines the way that technology was designed to be operated?

*AI Big Picture: AI Our Next Nukes?: The chances that China and similar rogue nations will out-militarize the U.S. when it comes to AI just got a bit more remote.

Reuters reports the Biden Administration is pushing the U.S. military to embed AI into its systems — while simultaneously ensuring that the remains fully controllable by humans.

Says Jake Sullivan, White House national security advisor:
“We have to get this right, because there is probably no other technology that will be more critical to our national security in the years ahead.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post SearchGPT: ChatGPT’s New Web Search Tool appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Bare Minimum With a Side of Bland?

Apparently, editors and writers looking to be dazzled by the new AI writing and editing tools promised for the iPhone this week will probably end-up non-plussed.

Observes Joanna Stern, a writer for the Wall Street Journal: “If you’re expecting AI fireworks, prepare for AI — sparklers.

“Apple’s Writing Tools are the convenient drive-through right on the highway.

“OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the better restaurant a few miles off your route.”

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Under-the-Hood of Microsoft’s New AI Agents: Microsoft has released a highly detailed look at how its new AI agents actually work in this video.

Trumpeted by many as the next step in AI’s evolution, AI agents — which you can build using everyday language — are promising to automate countless everyday tasks.

This video, for example, offers a close-up on how an AI agent can be built to automate ongoing communications with a customer.

But the concepts leveraged by the showcased AI agent could just as easily be applied by a journalist looking to automate ongoing communications with a source, for example.

Or, the agent could also be tweaked to become a virtual journalist to venture out onto the Web to seek-out and cultivate new sources.

Observes Jared Spataro, a marketing officer at Microsoft: Agents “are the new apps for an AI-powered world. Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous.

They will work on behalf of an individual, team or function to execute and orchestrate businesses process.

“Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents, and they’ll do everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain.”

*Zoom’s New AI Writing and Research Tools: De-Jumbling Your Thoughts: Video-meeting king Zoom is out with an upgrade of its onboard AI, dubbed AI Companion 2.0.

The upgrade includes new polish on AI writing tools that can auto-generate text content, help edit text and auto-generate summaries.

Plus, enhanced research capabilities include the ability to ask questions of documents and similar data that you upload to Zoom.

*Grammarly’s New ROI Tools: For Writing That Needs a Score: AI evangelists looking to sell their companies on AI writing and editing now have new return-on-investment tools from Grammarly.

A pioneer in AI editing and writing, Grammarly now features an ‘ROI Report’ that measures how use of Grammarly helps a business deliver on key performance indicators.

Also new is an ‘Effective Communication Score,’ which can be used to evaluate how businesses are upping their game using Grammarly when it comes to producing quality text.

*Robo-Written Police Reports?: What Could Go Wrong?: Add the prosecuting attorney for Seattle, Washington to the growing list of legal entities saying ‘not so fast’ to the idea of police reports auto-written by AI.

Observes Matthew Guariglia, a writer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “This is a good development. We hope prosecutors across the country will exercise such caution as companies continue to peddle technology – generative artificial intelligence to help write police reports – that could harm people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.”

One of the EFF’s primary beef’s with AI-generated police reports: “While an officer is required to edit the narrative and assert under penalty of perjury that it is accurate, some of the GenAI errors are so small that they will be missed in review,” according to Guariglia.

*Microsoft’s Upgraded AI Assistant: Falling Short — But That’s Apparently on You: The latest retread of MS Copilot — a direct competitor to ChatGPT — has left many users disenchanted.

Observes writer Kevin Okemwa: “Interestingly, Microsoft insiders revealed that the top complaint about Copilot is that it does not work as well as ChatGPT.

“Microsoft has countered this feedback by claiming users aren’t leveraging Copilot’s capabilities as intended, hence the disparity.”

*Using ChatGPT on Windows Just Got Easier: ChatGPT now has a Windows app you can download to the desktop of your computerized device that makes ChatGPT access a snap.

Simply click “Alt + Space” on your keyboard once the app is downloaded and ChatGPT will instantly appear on your screen.

A similar app also exists for Mac computerized devices.

*Where AI Goes for Street Cred: The Never-Ending Chatbot Shootout: Open-source AI promulgator Hugging Face has given its free AI Chatbot rating service a new facelift.

Essentially: You can click here to see how ChatGPT is faring against its many rivals.

One caveat: Users contributing to the rating service use their own, subjective criteria when deciding how a chatbot stacks-up against its competitors.

So some reviewers, for example, may rate a chatbot at how well it renders computer code — rather than how well it auto-writes in comparison to other AI chatbots.

*The Top Ten Gladiators of Grammar: Participle, You Shall Dangle No More!: The London Daily News has come out with its list of the top AI tools in grammar checking.

Many commonly recommended offerings made the list.

Dark horses include LanguageTool and Scribens.

*AI Big Picture: State of AI Report 2024: AI investor Nathan Benaich and Air Street Capital have released their seventh annual take on AI.

Some key takeaways:

~ChatGPT’s maker may have a tougher time staying well ahead of the pack in coming years

~China’s AI labs are feeling the sting of U.S. sanctions designed to slow-down AI development in that country

~The combined value of AI companies has hit $9 trillion

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Apple Intelligence’s New AI Writer appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

One of the easiest ways to edit text in ChatGPT — once you have a draft that works for you — is to use the AI’s new onboard editor, Canvas.

A godsend to writers and editors, Canvas comes equipped with a number of handy tools that enable you to make quick, surgical and artful changes to any text.

But easily the most powerful tool of the lot is Canvas’ ‘highlight-and-change’ feature.

Essentially, this tool enables you to make onscreen changes to any text you highlight, without forcing you to regenerate your entire text every time you want to make a little tweak.

Instead, your requested changes appear onscreen for you in the precise location you made them — saving you considerable effort each-and-every time you make an edit.

For example, you can use Canvas to quickly edit the opening paragraph of a text to sound wittier by:

*Logging into ChatGPT
*Clicking on the AI engine you’re using on the top left of ChatGPT’s
home page once you’re logged in
*Choosing ‘GPT-4o with canvas’ as your engine
*A new screen appears, with a message box in the center
of the screen that asks, “What can I help you with?”
*Typing “Please open a blank canvas” in the message box
*A split-screen appears, that features:
~A new blank canvas on the right, where you enter your draft text
~A ChatGPT message box appears on the bottom left, where you can
input ‘traditional’ ChatGPT prompts any time you’d like
*Cutting-and-pasting your draft text onto the blank canvas
*Highlighting the opening paragraph of your text
*Waiting for an “Ask ChatGPT” tool to appear
*Clicking on the ‘Ask ChatGPT’ tool
*Typing into the ‘Ask ChatGPT’ message box, “Please make this sound
wittier”
*Waiting a few seconds as Canvas rewrites your highlighted paragraph
for you
*Waiting for a message to appear on the left side of your screen that
confirms the rewrite has been made
*Reading the rewritten paragraph, which appears in the exact location of
your previous paragraph

If you like the change Canvas has made, you can simply run with it and get on with other edits you may have in mind.

But if you don’t like what Canvas has wrought, you still have solid options.

Specifically: You can repeatedly message ‘Ask ChatGPT’ to make run-after-run at amping-up-the-wit in your text’s opening paragraph until Canvas comes up with an absolutely dazzling version for you.

Or, you can simply click the Canvas’ ‘rollback’ arrow — located at the top right-hand side of the screen — and stick with the paragraph you started with before Canvas made any changes.

One more example of the powerful new highlighting tool: You may want Canvas to rewrite some text that you’ve highlighted so that it targets a highly specific audience — such as your compatriots in your fantasy football club.

In practice, making that change to your text is also a snap for Canvas.

Simply:

*Highlight the text you’d like altered (In this case, you’ll be highlighting
the entire text, since you want the entire text altered)
*Input a prompt describing the change you want in the
‘Ask ChatGPT’ message box (In this case, you’ll ask Canvas to “Please
rewrite this text so that it appeals to a fantasy football club).
*Click ‘Enter’

And you’re done: Seconds later, ChatGPT will deliver new text for you that’s adjusted to your new specifications.

Essentially, the number of changes you’re able to make to your text with Canvas is limited only by your imagination.

Looking to re-color a text with a different emotion? Wish your text could be rewritten so that it presents a pro-and-con argument? Have a hankering to sprinkle your text with a dash of industry jargon?

Looking to make yet another kind of change to your text?

Each of those — and countless more — is a cakewalk for ChatGPT.

Again, simply:

*Highlight the text you’d like altered
*Input a prompt describing the precise change you want into the ‘Ask
ChatGPT’ message box
*Click Enter

And you’re done.

Seconds later, Canvas will serve-up the change you requested.

Accessing Canvas’ Beginner Editing Tools

Besides free-form editing, Canvas also comes equipped with a number of easy-to-use, pre-programmed buttons that beginners can use to edit all or part of a text.

For example: Simply highlight another passage in your text, or a number of paragraphs in your text — or even your entire text, for that matter — and you can access a toolbar on the bottom right screen of Canvas to make special kinds of edits.

Specifically, once you’ve cut-and-pasted your text into Canvas and highlighted text you’d like changed, simply hover over a pencil icon that you’ll find in the right, bottom corner of Canvas and you’ll see these tool buttons appear:

*Suggest Edits: The most versatile tool on the toolbar, clicking this button prompts ChatGPT to examine your highlighted text and auto-suggest ways to improve it.

*Adjust Reading Level: With a simple click of this button, you’ll be able to adjust your highlighted text to nine different reading levels — from kindergarten through graduate school.

*Adjust Length: A click here enables you to play around with the length of your highlighted text, easily enabling you to arrive at an optimum setting that’s right for you.

*Add Emojis: By clicking this button, you’ll be able to instantly add emojis to your highlighted text. Plus, if you feel that the result looks like ’emoji overkill,’ you can simply prompt Canvas — using the ‘Ask ChatGPT’ message box — to remove say 60% or 70% of the new text’s emojis — or whatever other percent reduction you’re after.

*Add Final Polish: Once you’re happy with your changes, clicking this button triggers Canvas to take one more look at your highlighted text and suggest any final edits, if needed.

As if that’s not enough, ChatGPT also features an extremely powerful ‘Help me write’ option that you can use if you find yourself staring at a blank screen and gulping with anxiety.

During such trying moments, you can activate ‘Help me write’ by opening ‘ChatGPT 4o with canvas’ and looking for the giant ‘What can I help with?’ message at the center of the screen.

Beneath that message, you should find a ‘Help me write’ tab that you can click on.

If the tab is not there, try clicking on the ‘More’ tab and that a ‘Help me write’ tab should appear.

Either way, after you click the ‘Help me write’ tab, a prompt will instantly appear in the ‘What can I help with?’ message box with the words ‘Help me write.’

Simply finish the sentence inside the message box detailing the format of text you’d like to create (such as free-form text, blog post, essay, social media post, etc.).

Instantly, Help me write will launch into an interview with you to help you pinpoint what you’d like included in your text.

Based on your inputs, Help me write will continue to walk you through the writing process, finish a draft of text for you — and then make sure you’re satisfied with the overall voice, tone and structure of the text it’s auto-created.

Pretty cool.

There is one caveat regarding all this new magic from ChatGPT: If you’re a newbie to ChatGPT, go in with both eyes open, knowing that the following Canvas onboard editing tools (which we’ve already seen) only represent an infinitesimally small capability of the full powers of the Canvas editor:

*Suggest Edits
*Adjust Reading Level
*Adjust Length
*Add Final Polish
*Add Emojis

Essentially, these aforementioned tools — found, as we’ve seen, by hovering your mouse over the pencil icon that’s located in the bottom right corner — are simply beginner tools that are designed to help get you started editing when using Canvas.

Once you get the hang of editing in Canvas by starting with these beginner tools, you’ll find that the true power of editing in Canvas comes from highlighting text you’d like to change — and then using the “Ask ChatGPT” message box to input precise, highly personalized editing preferences that you’d like the AI to use to rework your text.

Finally: If you’re a ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Team user, you’re in luck: Canvas should already be available from the model picker on the top left of ChatGPT’s home page.

Meanwhile, Canvas is currently being rolled-out to ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Education users — and may be offered to free users at a later date.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post ULTIMATE GUIDE:  New ChatGPT Editor, Canvas appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Red Flag: Google’s CoHosted-Podcast Maker Not Always Accurate

Google’s new NotebookLM — which has gone viral with its ability to auto-script and auto-produce a co-hosted podcast in minutes — is unfortunately also very good at making things up.

The new AI research tool — which uses two, extremely natural-sounding robot voices to discuss text, audio or video that you input into NotebookLM — is currently wowing the Web.

But reviewer Matt Derron has found that like all generative AI tools, the two robot voices can occasionally get it wrong.

“In trying to make the hosts sound natural with their back-and-forth banter, it sometimes misses the original intent of the source material,” Derron says.

Of course, that flaw is no reason to toss NotebookLM on the digital trash-heap: The AI tool’s ability to auto-generate an extremely lively, co-hosted podcast using numerous forms of media is still truly remarkable.

But to be on the safe side, you may want to do a little editing on any co-hosted podcast that’s auto-generated by NotebookLM before publishing it live — or suffer the consequences.

For an excellent, in-depth look and critique of how NotebookLM auto-produces co-hosted podcasts, check-out Derron’s in-depth video.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Video Guide: ChatGPT’s New Onboard Editor, ‘Canvas:’ If you’re looking for a crystal clear, extremely informative demo on ChatGPT’s new onboard editor, Canvas, this video is the ticket.

Produced by the ‘Productive Dude,’ channel, the 12-minute, video guide offers great insights into the editor, whose coolest feature is its ability to highlight and quickly change portions of a text in ChatGPT, on-the-fly.

Canvas is already available to paying users of ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Team, is currently being rolled-out to ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Education users.

It also may be offered to free users at a later date.

Other key tools included by the Canvas editor — which are operated with a click — include the ability to:

~adjust the word length of a document
~adjust the reading level of a document
~solicit editing suggestions for a document
~add final polish to a document’s wording
~add emojis to a document

Plus, while you’re using Canvas, you can also work with the document the ‘old fashioned’ way by using prompts to alter the document’s text.

*Gmail’s Upgraded Auto-Replies: For When “K” Isn’t Enough: Gmail aided by Google’s Gemini AI is now able to offer auto-replies to emails that are much more in-depth.

Observes writer Mike Moore: “After selecting to reply to a message, users will see several response options at the bottom of their screen, which now analyzes the full content of the email thread to provide more detailed, richer responses.

“Users can hover over each response to get a quick preview of the text, then select the one that feels right for the situation.

“You will be able to edit the pre-written message if needed, or send immediately.”

*When Less is More: New Frase Upgrade Cuts Clutter, Keeps Magic: Frase — an AI writer that specializes in auto-producing search engine optimized (SEO) copy — is out with an easier-to-use version.

Observes Matt Hurley, co-founder, Frase: “We removed the functionality that caused clutter and confusion and focused on building more of what truly mattered to our users.

“The result? A simpler yet more powerful tool that ensures you don’t need an army of specialists or endless training to create content that drives results.”

*Microsoft’s Upgraded Copilot: Part Assistant, Part Thinker, Always on: Microsoft Copilot — a key competitor to ChatGPT — now offers enhanced functionality, including:

~An audio-driven, daily news summary
~Natural voice interaction
~The ability to act as a companion when you browse the Web
~’Think Deeper,’ available via the Copilot Lab module, which enables Copilot’s AI to ruminate carefully before responding to a user question

*Google’s Podcast Creator: Instant Banter, Now With Audio and YouTube Inputs: Google’s NotebookLM — an AI research assistant that
auto-creates co-hosted podcasts from text — can now also ingest audio and YouTube videos to auto-create podcasts.

Observes Raiza Martin, a Google product manager: “Today, you can now add public YouTube URLs and audio files directly into your notebook, alongside PDFs, Google Docs, Slides, Web sites and more.”

In practice, this means you can add a bit of text to NotebookLM, a few links to some YouTube videos, a few more links to some audio podcasts — and the tool will auto-create a co-hosted podcast for you based on those inputs.

*Automated Blogging: Who Needs Quality When You Can Have Quantity?: Marketers and others using AI to auto-generate endless posts for their blog could be playing with fire, according to writer Sandra Dawson.

Specifically, Dawson says such automated blogging can lead to:

~Misinformation and low quality content

~Auto keyword stuffing

~Generic-sounding posts

~A slew of other downsides

*Using ChatGPT? Congrats, You’ve Mastered Most AI Writers Already: While there are hundreds of AI writers, just a few companies — including ChatGPT’s maker Open AI, Anthropic and Meta — actually power those auto-writers, according to Ryan Doser.

The reason: Most AI writers are simply software interfaces that sit atop the powerful AI engines that actually do the real work of auto-generating writing, according to this 12-minute video by Doser.

Plus, the few AI titans who own those AI engines currently all use the same technology: Generative AI.

A key takeaway: This is why it makes sense to stay well-acquainted with ChatGPT, whose AI engine — and underlying technology –serves as the foundation for many other AI writers.

Essentially: If you know how to use ChatGPT, you already know — in a general way — how to use all those other AI writers that are powered by ChatGPT or powered by other generative AI.

*New ChatGPT Challenger: Free, Open — and Ready to Rumble: ChatGPT has another challenger lurching for its throne: A new AI engine just released by Nvidia.

Interestingly, the new AI engine is open source, meaning anyone can download its software, tinker with it and/or build applications atop it, free-of-charge.

The reason why this particular AI engine is so notable: Most of today’s generative AI is powered by Nvidia chips, which heavily dominate the world as the go-to hardware for powering AI.

Plus, Nvidia also has extremely deep pockets to continue competing with ChatGPT: It’s currently one of the top five companies in the world and worth about $3.4 trillion.

*AI Big Picture: AI Engine Building: For People Who Use Moons as Paperweights: The power to build AI engines — the underlying software that powers today’s AI writers and similar apps — is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

The reason: It takes enormous amounts of capital to build such engines — also known as Large Language Models.

Case in point: Character.AI, an AI startup, just abandoned its efforts to enhance its own AI engine, given that such building has become incredibly expensive, according to writer Sage Lazzaro.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Dream a Little Dream for Me appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Red Flag: Google’s CoHosted-Podcast Maker Not Always Accurate

Google’s new NotebookLM — which has gone viral with its ability to auto-script and auto-produce a co-hosted podcast in minutes — is unfortunately also very good at making things up.

The new AI research tool — which uses two, extremely natural-sounding robot voices to discuss text, audio or video that you input into NotebookLM — is currently wowing the Web.

But reviewer Matt Derron has found that like all generative AI tools, the two robot voices can occasionally get it wrong.

“In trying to make the hosts sound natural with their back-and-forth banter, it sometimes misses the original intent of the source material,” Derron says.

Of course, that flaw is no reason to toss NotebookLM on the digital trash-heap: The AI tool’s ability to auto-generate an extremely lively, co-hosted podcast using numerous forms of media is still truly remarkable.

But to be on the safe side, you may want to do a little editing on any co-hosted podcast that’s auto-generated by NotebookLM before publishing it live — or suffer the consequences.

For an excellent, in-depth look and critique of how NotebookLM auto-produces co-hosted podcasts, check-out Derron’s in-depth video.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Video Guide: ChatGPT’s New Onboard Editor, ‘Canvas:’ If you’re looking for a crystal clear, extremely informative demo on ChatGPT’s new onboard editor, Canvas, this video is the ticket.

Produced by the ‘Productive Dude,’ channel, the 12-minute, video guide offers great insights into the editor, whose coolest feature is its ability to highlight and quickly change portions of a text in ChatGPT, on-the-fly.

Canvas is already available to paying users of ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Team, is currently being rolled-out to ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Education users.

It also may be offered to free users at a later date.

Other key tools included by the Canvas editor — which are operated with a click — include the ability to:

~adjust the word length of a document
~adjust the reading level of a document
~solicit editing suggestions for a document
~add final polish to a document’s wording
~add emojis to a document

Plus, while you’re using Canvas, you can also work with the document the ‘old fashioned’ way by using prompts to alter the document’s text.

*Gmail’s Upgraded Auto-Replies: For When “K” Isn’t Enough: Gmail aided by Google’s Gemini AI is now able to offer auto-replies to emails that are much more in-depth.

Observes writer Mike Moore: “After selecting to reply to a message, users will see several response options at the bottom of their screen, which now analyzes the full content of the email thread to provide more detailed, richer responses.

“Users can hover over each response to get a quick preview of the text, then select the one that feels right for the situation.

“You will be able to edit the pre-written message if needed, or send immediately.”

*When Less is More: New Frase Upgrade Cuts Clutter, Keeps Magic: Frase — an AI writer that specializes in auto-producing search engine optimized (SEO) copy — is out with an easier-to-use version.

Observes Matt Hurley, co-founder, Frase: “We removed the functionality that caused clutter and confusion and focused on building more of what truly mattered to our users.

“The result? A simpler yet more powerful tool that ensures you don’t need an army of specialists or endless training to create content that drives results.”

*Microsoft’s Upgraded Copilot: Part Assistant, Part Thinker, Always on: Microsoft Copilot — a key competitor to ChatGPT — now offers enhanced functionality, including:

~An audio-driven, daily news summary
~Natural voice interaction
~The ability to act as a companion when you browse the Web
~’Think Deeper,’ available via the Copilot Lab module, which enables Copilot’s AI to ruminate carefully before responding to a user question

*Google’s Podcast Creator: Instant Banter, Now With Audio and YouTube Inputs: Google’s NotebookLM — an AI research assistant that
auto-creates co-hosted podcasts from text — can now also ingest audio and YouTube videos to auto-create podcasts.

Observes Raiza Martin, a Google product manager: “Today, you can now add public YouTube URLs and audio files directly into your notebook, alongside PDFs, Google Docs, Slides, Web sites and more.”

In practice, this means you can add a bit of text to NotebookLM, a few links to some YouTube videos, a few more links to some audio podcasts — and the tool will auto-create a co-hosted podcast for you based on those inputs.

*Automated Blogging: Who Needs Quality When You Can Have Quantity?: Marketers and others using AI to auto-generate endless posts for their blog could be playing with fire, according to writer Sandra Dawson.

Specifically, Dawson says such automated blogging can lead to:

~Misinformation and low quality content

~Auto keyword stuffing

~Generic-sounding posts

~A slew of other downsides

*Using ChatGPT? Congrats, You’ve Mastered Most AI Writers Already: While there are hundreds of AI writers, just a few companies — including ChatGPT’s maker Open AI, Anthropic and Meta — actually power those auto-writers, according to Ryan Doser.

The reason: Most AI writers are simply software interfaces that sit atop the powerful AI engines that actually do the real work of auto-generating writing, according to this 12-minute video by Doser.

Plus, the few AI titans who own those AI engines currently all use the same technology: Generative AI.

A key takeaway: This is why it makes sense to stay well-acquainted with ChatGPT, whose AI engine — and underlying technology –serves as the foundation for many other AI writers.

Essentially: If you know how to use ChatGPT, you already know — in a general way — how to use all those other AI writers that are powered by ChatGPT or powered by other generative AI.

*New ChatGPT Challenger: Free, Open — and Ready to Rumble: ChatGPT has another challenger lurching for its throne: A new AI engine just released by Nvidia.

Interestingly, the new AI engine is open source, meaning anyone can download its software, tinker with it and/or build applications atop it, free-of-charge.

The reason why this particular AI engine is so notable: Most of today’s generative AI is powered by Nvidia chips, which heavily dominate the world as the go-to hardware for powering AI.

Plus, Nvidia also has extremely deep pockets to continue competing with ChatGPT: It’s currently one of the top five companies in the world and worth about $3.4 trillion.

*AI Big Picture: AI Engine Building: For People Who Use Moons as Paperweights: The power to build AI engines — the underlying software that powers today’s AI writers and similar apps — is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

The reason: It takes enormous amounts of capital to build such engines — also known as Large Language Models.

Case in point: Character.AI, an AI startup, just abandoned its efforts to enhance its own AI engine, given that such building has become incredibly expensive, according to writer Sage Lazzaro.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Dream a Little Dream for Me appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Writers whistling past the graveyard when it comes to AI — i.e., pretending that a mere machine will never be able to compete with their wit, style and moxie — encountered a number of rude awakenings in Q3.

PR Newswire, for example — which for decades has provided human-written press releases for tens of thousands of companies — came-out with a new auto-writing productivity suite that bypasses human writers and simply hands-over all the press release writing to AI.

Meanwhile, a major Web-authoring service released a similar suite of tools designed to auto-produce entire SEO-friendly blog posts — including imagery.

And writers like Jack Apollo — who have seen the writing on the wall and realize it was etched there by computers — have already thrown in the towel and are now training AI computers to write better.

In the process, those writers are also engineering their own obsolescence.

Perhaps even more ominous from a job security perspective: ChatGPT released yet another, smarter upgrade, which can think on the PhD level when it comes to dealing with physics, chemistry and biology.

The ChatGPT upgrade also scored a 95-out-of-100 on the Law School Admissions Test.

For those who’ve chosen not to whistle past the graveyard, the road ahead is crystal-clear: AI-generated writing is destined to vacuum-up millions of editing and writing jobs in coming years.

And countless writing pros looking to stay in the business will need to stay up-to-the-second on the latest in AI to ensure they can unearth the remaining nooks-and-crannies where they can continue to ply their trade.

In some cases, this will mean gravitating to the dwindling supply of writing jobs where human writers still have an edge over AI — such as news reporting that hinges heavily on possessing a wide array of human sources willing to provide breaking news insights and data.

And in other cases, accommodating AI’s brave new world will mean becoming the resident expert at your company or business on all things AI writing — as well as on all things other AI that can be used in concert with AI writing tools.

As for writers hoping-against-hope that all these AI breakthroughs are little more than a bad dream: They’ll be increasingly seen as once-useful team members from a quaint, bygone era.

Here’s a closer look at these stories that helped shape AI writing in Q3, along with others chronicling AI’s ongoing, wholesale reimagining of how writing — and all knowledge work, for that matter — will be done:

*PR Newswire Ditches Human Writers for AI Writing:
Public relations juggernaut PR Newswire has released a new suite of AI tools designed to help customers write and distribute press releases.

The AI undergirding the company’s new tools is Google Gemini.

A historical note: In the olden days, before the advent of AI, human writers were the ones who wrote press releases for PR Newswire.

*Blink-of-An-Eye: Popular Web-Authoring Platform Now Automates Posts: Wix has upped-its-game with a new AI suite “that can produce entire SEO-optimized blog posts, right down to the imagery,” according to writer Jess Weatherbed.

One compelling reason to add a blog: Web sites that feature blogs get 86% more organic traffic than those without, according to Einat Halperin, blog general manager, Wix.

Adds Weatherbed: “The new blogging tools also allow business users to connect their blogs to the Wix business solutions platform, enabling them to access features like sending promotional emails to subscribers and linking blog content to pricing plans.”

*Writing Career Suicide — Now With Algorithms: Writer Jack Apollo George has been granted the dubious honor of training AI to make himself obsolete.

Specifically, George is inputting examples of his own writing to help AI chatbots express themselves more eloquently.

Observes George: Working for an AI company as a writer is “a little like being told you are going to be paid a visit by Dracula — and instead of running for the hills, you stayed-in and laid the table.”

*Freelance Writing Dreams Disappearing in a Puff of Code: Add freelancers to the growing list of workers discovering that AI is less a ‘helpful buddy’ and more a ruthless job stealer.

Case in point: Since the advent of ChatGPT, job opportunities in freelance writing have declined 21%, according to a newly updated study.

Observes writer Laura Bratton: “Research shows that easily-automated writing and (computer) coding jobs are being replaced by AI.”

*Fake Writers, Real Profits: Book Writers Plagued by AI Rip-Offs: Many writers selling their books on Amazon say they’re increasingly finding AI rip-offs of their work for sale.

The primary culprits: Suspiciously prolific ‘writers’ who pump-out hundreds of titles per year — but don’t seem to exist in the real world.

Observes writer Kevin Maimann: One of the most prominent suspect authors is “Mari Silva, who has 532 titles on a vast range of spiritual and cultural topics spanning world history, but no visible online presence outside of a vague Amazon author bio with a generic silhouetted photo of a woman.”

*Upgraded ChatGPT Thinks at the PhD Level: OpenAI is out with a new upgrade to ChatGPT that features extremely advanced, in-depth thinking — and outperforms PhD students in physics, chemistry and biology.

The software undergirding the new upgrade — dubbed OpenAI o1 — also offers head-turning new performance highs in math and computer coding.

While the jury is still out on the upgrade’s impact on ChatGPT’s automated writing skills, people who make lots of money every day by relying heavily on writing — i.e., lawyers — will want to take a close look at this enhancement.

The reason: According to OpenAI’s in-house tests, this latest version of its AI software scored 95-out-of-100 on the Law School Admissions Test.

Yikes.

*Google’s Latest Sleight-of-Hand: Transforming Your Article Into a Co-Hosted Podcast: Google AI has come-up with a remarkable new feature that auto-transforms your article, blog post or other text into an extremely engaging, co-hosted podcast.

Essentially, the new tech studies your text, then uses two, extremely lifelike and animated robot voices — one male, one female — to discuss the key points and themes in your piece.

Far from a gimmick, the new feature of Google’s Notebook LM platform can enhance any text-based digital property looking to add highly professional, co-hosted, audio podcasts to its mix.

Click here to listen to an article transformed into a co-hosted podcast, courtesy Google.

*Free-for-All: Open Source Promises Wide Array of AI Writing Tools: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg predicts that writers and others will continue to have a number of AI choices as the tech grows ever–more sophisticated.

A key player in AI writing/chat tech, Zuckerberg has released his AI code as open-source — available to any and all to use and alter.

Observes Zuckerberg: “I don’t think that AI technology is a thing that should be kind of hoarded and — that one company gets to use it to build whatever central, single product that they’re building.”

*82% of College Students Add AI to Their Toolkit: A new Quizlet study finds that 82% of college students are now using AI — with 58% of high school students also onboard.

Observes Meghann Lomas, senior director of product management, Quizlet: “College students are adopting AI at a rapid pace, illustrating that this technology isn’t a trend but rather a profound shift in how they learn and engage with curriculum.”

The survey was based on responses from 1,000 students aged 14-22 and 500 teachers — all based in the U.S.

*AI Big Picture: AI’s Price Wars: For Consumers, Rock-Bottom is the Place to Be: Consumers currently have the upper hand when choosing their preferred AI engine.

Makers of the AI — which undergirds most of the world’s most popular AI chatbots — are essentially giving away developer access to their AI based on hopes that there will be profit in the tech long-term, according to Aidan Gomez, CEO, Cohere.

Observes Gomez: “It’s gonna be like a zero-margin business because there’s so much price dumping. People are giving away the model (AI engine) for free.

“It’ll still be a big business, it’ll still be a pretty high number because people need this tech — it’s growing very quickly — but the margins, at least now, are gonna be very tight.”

Snickered one consumer: “I feel your pain.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Top Ten Stories in AI Writing, Q3, 2024 appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

AI Engineer Snags $2.7 Billion to Sign With Google

If you’re chatting-up your boss for a raise, you may want to reference the deal Noam Shazeer just cut with Google.

A former Google employee that the tech titan sorely missed, the AI wunderkind was happy to let bygones be bygones — for a mere $2.7 billion signing fee.

Shazeer is one of the early pioneers of what were to become AI chatbots — the tech that powers most of today’s auto-writers.

Technically speaking, Google also purchased Shazeer’s start-up company — Character.AI — as part of his rehire.

But “within Google, Shazeer’s return is widely viewed as the primary reason the company agreed to pay the multibillion-dollar licensing fee,” according to writer Miles Kruppa.

Brings new meaning to the song lyric, “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.”

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Meeting Minutes, Minus the Misery: Zoom’s AI Meeting Note-Taker: Wired reviewer John Brandon offers an in-depth look at new AI for Zoom software — dubbed ‘AI Companion’ — that auto-generates meeting notes and summaries.

AI Companion can also tell you who talked the most during a Zoom meeting — and even gauge the meeting’s overall emotional tone, according to Brandon.

Brandon’s verdict: “Overall, the AI Companion saved time in an important way: No one had to take notes in any of my meetings, and the final summaries were all quite useful. No clicking or clacking!”

*Brain Transplant: Google Adds ‘Copilot’ Type Chatbot to Its Workspace Suite: In an effort to compete with ‘Copilot’ — an AI chatbot that Microsoft offers for use in its business productivity suite — Google has added a similar AI chatbot to its competing suite, Workplace.

Observes writer Emilia David: “Workspace users in the Business, Enterprise and Frontline plans will automatically get access to the Gemini app that’s now built into the platform.

“Workspace offers enterprises access to a large swath of Google products — Gmail, Docs and Calendars — but with the option of using their own domains and enterprise-level security. “

*Salesforce Promising ‘Copilot Killer:’ Deriding Microsoft’s Copilot as little more than an annoying time-waster, Salesforce is promising to roll-out a competing product for its own workplace productivity suite.

Dubbed ‘Agentforce,’ the AI system is designed to make it easier to use business software — and to integrate with hundreds of business applications.

Observes writer Sasha Rogelberg: “It’s part of a growing movement of implementing AI agents over copilots to take tech assistance one step further.”

*The End of I Never Said That?: Editors and writers looking for an easy way to record — and instantly transcribe — in-person interviews may want to check-out the Plaud-AI pin.

Powered by ChatGPT, the $169, soon-to-be-released tech comes with 300 free, monthly transcription minutes, according to writer Brian Heater.

Observes Heater: “The recordings are saved on your phone in real time. And from there you can decide whether to upload them for transcription — depending on how robust a monthly subscription you have.”

*Chatbots Gone Wild: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Third Reich: The Wall Street Journal became the latest to find out the hard way that hosting an experimental AI chatbot can be an egg-on-face experience.

Specifically: Pranksters recently spoofed an experimental WSJ chatbot — designed to offer iPhone information — to instead spout Hitler talk.

Observes writer Joanna Stern: “Like my three-year-old, bots struggle to follow the rules.”

*AI a Hit Among UK Lawyers: Increasing numbers of UK legal pros are going all-in on AI, according to a new survey from LexisNexis.

Researchers found that 41% of 800+ legal pros surveyed are currently using AI for work.

Observes writer Caroline Hill: “Lawyers with plans to use AI for legal work in the near future also jumped from 28% to 41%, while those with no plans to adopt AI dropped from 61% to 15%.”

*ChatGPT CEO’s Crystal Ball on Our Future: Everyone Wins the Lottery?: Sam Altman — the AI wunderkind that made ChatGPT and AI household words the world over — predicts AI’s impact on the future will most likely be so overwhelmingly positive, it’s unimaginable.

Observes Altman: “How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?

“In three words: Deep learning worked.

“In 15 words: Deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale — and we dedicated increasing resources to it.”

*Free-for-All: Open-Source AI Gets Another Boost: Fans of open-source AI software — released free to the world on the theory that the real money is in the apps to be built atop it — have something new to cheer about.

Facebook’s parent Meta has released an upgrade to its AI software that competes directly with the AI engine undergirding ChatGPT.

Dubbed Llama 3.2, the AI engine is still a bit weaker than the one running ChatGPT.

But long-run, the competition is sure to help keep AI prices lower.

*AI Big Picture: Hungry for Cash, ChatGPT-Maker on the Hunt for Unthinkable Billions: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI, is currently on a world tour attempting to convince players in the computer industry to cooperatively build the next generation of AI data centers.

Altman insists the world will need a spate of these centers to fully realize AI’s potential.

The cost of each new center: A cool $100 billion, he says.

Observes writer Cade Metz: “OpenAI believes this kind of technology could be the future of its business. If it can get its hands on more computing power, its AI can learn to do more. At least, that is the theory.”

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

The post Now That’s a Big Payday appeared first on Robot Writers AI.