All posts by Joe Dysart

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.

New Service Auto-Selects Best AI Engine for Your Next Writing Project

A San Francisco startup has just released what could be one of the smartest AI services of the year: An app that promises to auto-select the best AI engine for your next writing or other project.

Essentially, instead of wondering if you should turn to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude — or any number of other AI chatbots — to write your next article, for example, the new service, dubbed Martian, will do all that analysis and choosing for you.

Says Shriyash Upadhyay, co-founder, Martian: “We can automatically choose the right model, not even on a task-by-task basis, but a query-by-query basis. This allows for lower costs and higher performance — because it means that you don’t always have to use a single model.”

Besides promising to be the perfect selection coach, Martian — and similar services — help keep AI writing costs low by offering access to a wide array of AI chatbots with just one click or tap.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*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 co-hosted, audio podcasts to its mix.

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

*900+ Universities Bet On Grammarly: Let’s Just Auto-Correct Everything: More than 900 universities and colleges have waved the white flag on AI and are now all-in on introducing the tech into their curriculums.

Essentially, the association has agreed to work with Grammarly AI to infuse its technology into college classes.

Observes a Business Wire press release: “This effort will drive research and dialogue on how higher education institutions can incorporate AI technologies in ways that are ethical, effective — and aligned with educational goals.”

Sounds good in theory.

*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.

*Microsoft Copilot’s New Unified Database: From Chaos to Clarity in a Click: Microsoft is out with a key, new feature for its Copilot that consolidates everything it knows about your company — as well as everything else you’d like included from the Web — into a single database.

The pitch: With the unified database, you’ll have much greater flexibility in creating articles and other text on-the-fly with Copilot.

Observes writer Graham Barlow: “So you could prompt Copilot with something like ‘make a report similar to that one we did last month for Eric –but with the new data’ — and it will compile it for you.”

*New Auto-Essays: Without the Annoying Learning Part: Yet another AI startup has released a new auto-writing app promising to auto-write tough-to-beat, instant essays.

Dubbed PerfectEssayWriter.ai, the tool is also designed to engage in Q&As with you and also revise your own writing.

Still no definitive word if this AI essay app is currently the best essay writer the planet has ever seen.

*Customer Chat Gets A Mood Ring: For Humans Who Can’t Read a Room: Customer chat reps who are tone-deaf when it comes to assessing customer mood now have new help from AI.

The Talkdesk customer-to-chat-rep system is out with a new feature that auto-assesses customer mood in the chat — and then auto-creates an appropriate reply based on that mood.

The tech is also designed to work with email or smartphone texts.

*Snapshot: Key Players in AI Email Writing: Mastering The Art of ‘Per My Last Email:’ HTF Market Intelligence is predicting healthy growth in the AI-powered email writing market with a new report.

Key players in that market, according to HTF, are:

~Grammarly

~Boomerang

~Crystal

~Phrasee

~Textio

~WriteSonic

~Persado

~Friday

~Toolsaday

~Mailmeteor

~WriteMail.ai

~YAMM

~AImReply

~Nanonets

~HubSpot

~Rytr

~Mailmodo

~Botowski

~Flowrite

~Hyperwrite

~CopyAI

~Remail

~Smartwriter AI

~Ellie

~Jasper AI

~GMPlus

~WriteMail

~Mailr

~SmartWriter

~Ghostwrite

*Snapshot: Key Players in AI Editing and Proofreading: Fixing Typos So You Can Plot World Domination: HTF Market Intelligence is predicting major growth in the AI-powered editing and proofreading market with a new report.

Key players in that market, according to HTF, are:

~Grammarly

~ProWritingAid

~Hemingway Editor

~Ginger Software

~WhiteSmoke

~Slick Write

~PaperRater

~Autocrit

~Zoho Writer

~LanguageTool

~SmartEdit

~Microsoft Editor

~Turnitin

~QuillBot

*AI Big Picture: No End in Sight on Corporate AI Spending Spree: Apparently, SpendFest 2024 — wherein major investors from across the world throw gobs and gobs of money at the concept of AI — is still in full swing.

Observes writer Nate Rattner: “Generative artificial intelligence has sparked one of the biggest spending booms in modern American history, as companies and investors bet hundreds of billions of dollars that the technology will revolutionize the global economy and one day lead to massive profits.

“The question is when, and even whether, all those investments will pay off.”

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 Wheel of AI Fortune appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

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.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: The Top 50 AI Writing Tools to Try: Copywriters looking for a round-up on the latest AI tools designed to make their jobs easier will want to take a look at this piece.

It offers a great overview of the most popular — and most groundbreaking AI tools — in their writing genre.

In addition to well-known AI writers, the guide also explores lesser-known, niche tools, including:

~Writerly, which includes a generative AI Chrome extension that helps users extract ideas from articles during browsing and generates content briefs for writers

~GetGenie, a WordPress plugin that uses AI to replace over 10 different apps.

~TextCortex, an AI Writer designed to accommodate your distinct writing style and singular writing requirements

*Goodbye, Ramblin’ Rose: New WordPress Tool Goes for Writing Clarity: The maker of WordPress has come out with a new AI tool designed to make your posts clearer and more succinct.

Dubbed ‘Write Brief with AI,’ the tool alerts users if their prose uses too many words — or if their wording ‘lacks confidence.’

The new tool could significantly improve writing on Web sites worldwide, given that 43% of all Web sites run on WordPress.

*ESPN AI To Cover Women’s Soccer: Because Mansplaining Wasn’t Enough: Sports news juggernaut ESPN has decided to add AI-written stories to its coverage mix.

So far, the plan is to limit AI-generation of prose to recaps of matches in the National Women’s Soccer League and the Premier Lacrosse League.

Observes writer Tom Jones: “The fear among living and breathing journalists is that this is a slippery slope, and that AI is taking their jobs.”

*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.”

*AI to College Writing Centers: Nice Knowing You: Higher education continues to struggle with its love/hate relationship with AI — including some writing centers that are offering new courses in AI-powered writing.

Observes Sherry Wynn Perdue, president, International Writing Centers Association: “I see this as a real opportunity for writing centers to show leadership if they’re given an opportunity.”

But not everyone is happy with the embrace of AI at the university level.

Observes writer Maggie Hicks: “Some writing instructors worry, though, that the new tools may tempt colleges to rely too heavily on the technology or even eliminate writing centers entirely.”

*AI-Written Academic Papers: Now Easier to Spot Than a Bad Wig?: Researcher Ahmed Abdeen Hamed has helped develop a new app designed to expose academic research papers written with AI.

Dubbed xFakeSci, the experimental tool has turned in accuracy rates of up to 94%.

Observes Hamed: “Because I work with medical publications, clinical trials, online resources and mining social media, I’m always concerned about the authenticity of the knowledge somebody is propagating.”

*Update on AI and Email Marketing: Turning ‘Unsubscribe’ Into ‘Tell Me More’: Shopify has put together a handy guide on the state-of-the-art of AI in email marketing.

Turns-out, many of the same email marketing tasks once performed by humans are now easily handled by AI, including:

*Smart segmentation

*Email personalization

*Subject line suggestions

*Content creation

*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 do not actually 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.”

*AI Big Picture: AI — Now With Emotions: Finally, Robots That Understand Your Existential Dread: A psychologist who specializes in measuring emotion has come out with a new app that imbues AI chatbots’ voices with much more emotion.

Dubbed Hume AI, the app enables various AI chatbots to listen to queries with much greater empathy.

Observes psychologist and Hume AI co-founder Alan Cowen: “We specialize in building empathic personalities that speak in ways people would speak — rather than stereotypes of AI assistants.”

But not everyone is happy with the embrace of AI at the university level.

Observes writer Maggie Hicks: “Some writing instructors worry, though, that the new tools may tempt colleges to rely too heavily on the technology or even eliminate writing centers entirely.”

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 Take a Powder, Einstein appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

ChatGPT-Maker Mulls New $2,000/Month Rate

Is the party over for everyday users of ChatGPT?

Tech pub The Information reports that the maker of ChatGPT — OpenAI — is mulling plans to jack-up the price of future versions of the wonder-bot to as much as $2,000/month.

Currently, a basic subscription to ChatGPT costs $20/month.

Observes a story by Thomson Reuters: “The reported pricing discussions come after media reports said Apple and chip giant Nvidia were in talks to invest in OpenAI as part of a new fundraising round that could value the ChatGPT maker above $100 billion.”

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: New Video-to-Blog-Post AI Released: Bloggers looking to easily transform videos from YouTube, Instagram and similar into text blog posts may want to take a gander at ArticleX.

Designed to connect easily to video accounts, the new tool can quickly analyze a selected video, capture key info and then automatically generate a blog post.

That post comes complete with a featured image and an embed of the original video.

Plus, all the text is rendered in a customized brand voice.

For those who want a more automated experience, ArticleX can also detect new video content on the Web and then repurpose that content as a blog post directly on a Web site.

One hopes that in the midst of their transformation options, users always remember to credit the original source video.

*Pocket Change: New AI Chatbot Challenges ChatGPT at $10/Month: Ninja SuperGPT AI Assistant — a direct competitor to ChatGPT — now has a million users, according to Babak Pahlavan, CEO, NinjaTechAI.

Offering unlimited image generation, the AI is designed to work with more than 20 of the world’s most popular AI engines.

One of those AI engines — also known as Large Language Models — is its own Ninja-LLM 3.0, which is built on AI developed by Facebook parent Meta.

*Let the Existential Crisis Begin!: AI Okay for Novel Writing Contest: Looks like mere flesh-bags are going to be competing with the most advanced AI chatbots on the planet in this year’s National Novel Writing Month competition.

Organizers have green-lit use of the tech in the competition, which challenges writers to crank-out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

The blowback: Four members of the organization sponsoring the competition have resigned from their roles — as has at least one sponsor, according to writer Peter Biles.

*Highbrow Literature Meets AI: Because Even Fancy Words Need Automation: Writers unconvinced that today’s AI can produce highbrow literature are in for a rude awakening, according to writer Tim Brinkoff.

Adds writer Sean Michaels: “I think there is a misconception that Large Language Models like ChatGPT are not very good at writing in a lyrical, literary prose style.

“In fact, they can do it easily and quite well — just like all the image-generating software can do things like making photos in the styles of Wes Anderson or David Lynch.”

*Can’t Finish That Novel? Let AI Pretend You Did!: Writer Amanda Caswell says she was able to use Sudowrite — a popular AI tool used by fiction writers — to help get over writer’s block and finally finish her novel.

Observes Caswell: “Sudowrite has genuinely transformed my approach to writing. Six months ago, if you had told me I’d complete not one, but two YA science fiction novels, I would have laughed.

“If you’d told me one of those novels would hit #1 on Amazon for a week, I’d have begged for the secret.

“Sudowrite isn’t just a tool: It’s a creative companion that can help unlock your writing potential. Give it a try and you might just find yourself finally writing that novel.”

*Pixel Showdown: Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots Compete for Best in AI Imaging: Writers looking for arresting supporting images to complement their text may want to check-out writer Ryan Morrison’s ranking of seven top AI imagers.

The result: Image judging turns-out to be so subjective, you’ll probably want to take a look at each of the seven images Morrison generated and make your own assessment.

Fortunately, Morrison includes all seven images in his article — which are just a click away.

*Challenger Elbows-In on ChatGPT’s Business Customers: ChatGPT competitor Claude is attempting to take a bite out of the market leader’s business by offering an Enterprise edition of its own.

Like ChatGPT Enterprise, the Claude alternative offers greater privacy protection for businesses.

Also included is the ability to work with dozens of 100-page documents simultaneously — or a two-hour audio transcript.

*Apparently, There is Such a Thing As a Free Lunch: No-Charge AI Engine Nears 350 Million Downloads: Fans of open-source AI — freely released to the world to help stimulate the development of AI apps across the globe — learned that Facebook parent Meta has become a mighty player in that effort.

New data released by Meta reveals that the company’s free, open-source AI engine — dubbed Llama — has been downloaded nearly 350 million times.

Observes Jensen Huang, CEO, Nvidia: “Llama has profoundly impacted the advancement of state-of-the-art AI.

“The floodgates are now open for every enterprise and industry to build and deploy custom Llama supermodels.

“It’s incredible to witness the rapid pace of adoption in just the past month.”

*AI Big Picture: Time Magazine’s Tops-in-AI Rankings: When Changing the World Only Gets You Fourth Place: Time has released its list of the top 100 people in AI, which includes Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft and Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead, Hugging Face — a promoter of open-source AI.

Curiously, Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT and the person who made both AI and ChatGPT household words the world over — is rated at number four.

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 Inflation Just Got Artificially Intelligent appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

The days of police reports typed with one-finger by exasperated peacekeepers may soon go the way of brass knuckles.

Cops in Oklahoma City are now using an AI chatbot — linked to their body camera — to write pursuits and arrests in real-time.

Observes Oklahoma City Police Sergeant Matt Gilmore regarding the AI’s report on a recent incident: “It was a better report than I could have ever written — and it was 100% accurate.”

Other city police departments giving AI a whirl include Lafayette, Indiana and Fort Collins, Colorado, according to lead writer Sean Murphy.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: The Algorithm Kings: Top 100 AI Consumer Apps: Andreessen-Horowitz has released its semi-annual report on the top apps in AI.

The ranking offers an excellent snapshot on who’s who in AI — and how they stack-up against one another.

Not surprisingly, ChatGPT tops the list, followed by Google’s Gemini, Character.ai, Liner and Quillbot.

*ChatGPT Now Clocking 200 Million Users-a-Week: ChatGPT — still the industry standard in AI writing and generative AI — is now reeling-in 200 million active users every week.

Observes writer Kevin Okemwa: “According to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s broad user base is partly attributed to Fortune 500 companies.”

Currently, 92% of the Fortune 500 use ChatGPT, according to Okemwa.

*AI Writing Pioneer Now Plays Nice With All the Cool AI Engines: Anyword — a key player in AI-powered writing for marketers — can now work with a number of AI engines, also known as Large Language Models.

Ideally, this reconfiguration means you’ll be able to use Anyword to auto-generate marketing copy with ChatGPT, Google Gemini and similar AI engines.

Anyword made the switch “with the understanding that content will be created around an organization by many people through different tools and platforms,” according to Yaniv Makover, CEO, Anyword.

*Study: AI Loves a Good Example: The next time you’re looking to prompt an AI engine like ChatGPT to do something for you, you’ll have the best luck showing it an example of what you’re looking for.

Apparently — according to a new study released from Amazon and the University of California — AI engines can achieve “near-perfect accuracy” when relying on examples to reason their way to a solution.

Such reasoning “involves observing specific instances or examples and drawing general conclusions or patterns from them,” according to writer Ben Dickson.

*New AI for Gmail: Looking to Transform Messages from Meh to Marvelous: Paying users of select Google services can now use new AI to help punch-up emails before they tap “send.”

The AI help appears with the message “refine my draft” as soon as you type 12 words or more in Gmail.

Observes writer Wes Davis: “Swipe your thumb across the text, and you’ll be given the choice to Polish, Formalize, Elaborate, or Shorten — or to have Gemini just write a whole new draft for you.”

The catch: You need to be a paying subscriber to Google One AI Premium or Google’s Gemini add-on for Workspace to get access to the new AI.

*Google’s Promised AI Customizations: Your Chatbot, Your Rules, Your Imagination: Users of Google’s Gemini chatbot — a direct competitor to ChatGPT — are being promised they’ll soon be able to create custom versions of the AI featuring distinct personalities and/or special expertise.

Observes writer Emma Roth: “For users who don’t want to create a custom chatbot right away, Google is offering some pre-made ‘Gems,’ including a learning coach, an idea brainstormer, a career guide, a coding partner and an editor.”

ChatGPT already offers users the ability to customize the chatbot — and sell those customizations if they prefer — via the maker’s online store.

*Google: Throwing Millions at California — Hoping It Sticks: Google is promising millions of dollars in its effort to derail proposed California legislation that would force it to pay for news that appears next to its advertising on Google search and similar products.

The cash would be bundled with funds from the state and other sources into a support fund for news organizations that could balloon to as much as $250 million, according to lead writer Karen Weise.

California Governor Gavin Newsom gives the move a big thumbs-up.

But a union representing journalists denounced the deal as a shakedown, according to Weise.

*Forgetful? Now AI Reminds You of Everything You Ignored in Meetings: Otter.ai is rolling-out a new “My Action Items” feature designed to track all of your action items across all of your meetings.

Essentially, whether you’re meeting on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or in-person, the AI assistant is promising to capture all of those action items and store them in a centralized location.

Specific features of My Action Items include:

~Consolidated Action Items: Eliminates the need to search through past meetings, providing a single, centralized view of all assigned tasks.

~Context-Rich Tasks: Offers links back to the specific moment in the conversation where each action item was created, ensuring clarity and accuracy.

~Notifications: Delivers a weekly digest email reminding users of outstanding action items, fostering accountability and completion.

*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 Oklahoma City Cops All-In on AI appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

RobotWritersAI.com is playing hooky.

We’ll be back Sept. 2, 2024 with fresh news and analysis on the latest in AI-generated writing.

The post Gone Fishin’ appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Some Colleges Fully Integrate AI Into Coursework

Dismissing concerns that AI is an automated cheating tool, some colleges have decided to fully integrate the tech into their curriculums.

The rationale: AI skills have become so crucial to employment in many industries, it’s more important to skill-up students in the tech than to worry about AI’s other, nefarious uses.

Observes writer Milla Surjadi: “Schools are even going so far as to emphasize that all undergraduates get a taste of the tech, teaching them how to use AI in a given field — as well as its failings and unethical applications.”

Adds Emory University student Jake Golden: “If I don’t learn AI, it’s going to take over everything around me and I’m going to have no idea what’s happening.”

In-Depth Guide: SEO AI Writer Scalenut: Writer Anwesha Roy offers an incredibly detailed guide on Scalenut in this piece — which can also be used as a benchmark to evaluate similar AI SEO writing tools on the market.

The upshot: Facing incredibly fierce competition, Scalenut has grown increasingly sophisticated, including add-on services such as:

~keyword generation

~Web traffic analysis

~link building

~’writing humanization’ of content designed to avoid penalties from search engines for generic-sounding content

~one-click WordPress publishing

Roy’s verdict: “Despite being packed with features, Scalenut is surprisingly easy to use.

“While there’s a learning curve, tutorials on every page and an exhaustive support Web site will help you along.”

*Marketing Mojo: Blaze AI Drops New Playbook for Automating Content : Blaze AI — a kind of Swiss army knife for content creation and publishing — is out with a new guide.

Designed to help marketers get the most from Blaze AI, the new guide offers a collection of checklists, worksheets, cheat sheets, FAQs, swipe files, planners and other resources created to help lighten-the-load in content creation and publishing.

Blaze AI is one of a number of AI marketing platforms that go beyond auto-writing and auto-image creation to offer a suite of AI tools specifically designed for marketers.

*New AI Search for Content Clearinghouse: Now You Don’t Even Have to Skim: Scribd — an online depository of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, documents and the like — has added AI-powered search to its service.

Dubbed ‘AskAI,’ the new tool enables users to ask questions and get answers about specific documents in the clearinghouse.

AskAI can analyze documents of up to 1,000 pages and in just a few seconds return key takeaways, extract specific data from the text or expand on concepts found in the document.

*Bot Bargain: ChatGPT-Maker Cuts Prices for Developers, Consumers Win: Good news for AI users: OpenAI has reduced the price of developer services offered via its flagship AI engine GPT-4o.

Ideally, that translates into lower prices for AI-powered consumer apps that developers are building atop the tech.

Observes writer Pradeep Viswanathan: The ongoing price war between OpenAI and Google — marked by recent significant price reductions from both companies — is a promising development for developers.

“This increased competition is expected to drive innovation, leading to even more powerful and accessible large language models in the future.”

*Ten-Second Videos, Free-of-Charge: Writers working with text-to-video may want to give Kling AI a whirl, a new service currently offering free use credits.

KlingAI is designed to generate videos up to ten seconds long.

It also enables control of camera movements for the videos it renders, including panning, tilting and zooming.

Currently, users can create three, 10-second videos per day with Kling AI, free-of-charge.

*Shocker: Students Use AI to Cheat: A new study finds that the second most popular use for ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots is for cheating by students.

Think homework and the prompt, ‘Explain the Monroe Doctrine in a sentence.’

Observes writer Katie Notopoulos: “If I were an 11th-grader right now, I suspect I’d probably be pretty enthused.”

*AI-Automated Report Writers: The Future of Last-Minute Deadlines?: Orbis Research has released an in-depth analysis on the current and future market in AI-powered report writing tools.

Besides listing widely popular, general use AI tools in its evaluation, Orbis also unearthed a few AI tools specifically designed to auto-write reports, including:

~Report X

~Real Fast Reports

~Paperpal

*Begging Made Easy: Five AI Grant Writing Tools to Try: AI content generators are proliferating so rapidly, there are already a number of tools specifically designed to auto-write grants.

ICT offers snapshot reviews of four of those:

~Grantable

~Grant Orb

~Grant Assistant

~GrantBoost

Interestingly, ICT included ChatGPT in its grant-writing tools roundup, rating the blockbuster chatbot as ‘somewhat useful’ for the specific purpose of grant proposal writing.

*AI Big Picture: AI-Powered Productivity Gains: Much Ado About Nothing?: A new study finds that 77% of workers complain that AI is actually increasing their workload and decreasing productivity.

One potential explanation: Employers may not be doing enough to train employees in the new tech.

Observes writer Sergio De Simone: “Despite their expectations about the benefits of using AI tools, approximately three-quarters of surveyed executives admit they have no training plan in place for their workforce.

“And only 13% maintain they developed a well-implemented strategy.”

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 Throwing Caution to the Wind appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

ChatGPT With Voice Gets Another Run

OpenAI’s second try with AI voice appears to be a winner, according to a new piece in Ars Technica.

Early tests shared by users on social media have been largely enthusiastic, according to writer Benj Edwards.

Apparently, people are responding positively to the tool’s ability — with voice — to sense emotional cues and provide sound effects while telling stories, according to Edwards.

They also like that ChatGPT voice allows users to interrupt in mid-sentence.

OpenAI was forced to put testing of voice-enabled ChatGPT on hold earlier this year after actress Scarlett Johansson complained one of the AI voices offered by ChatGPT sounded just like her.

*In-Depth Guide: Getting Chatty With Google Workspace — AI Pro Tips Google has rolled-out a new primer designed to help you get the most from its new AI upgrade to Workspace.

Observes writer Molly McHugh-Johnson: “‘Gemini in the Workspace’ side panel allows you to chat with Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive — all without ever leaving the app you’re in.”

The pro tips focus primarily on how to chat with Gemini — or prompt it — to ensure it understands what you’re trying to achieve.

*Making the Most of AI Tools: One Writer’s Alchemy for Success: With so many AI content creation tools on the market right now, writers have plenty to cherry pick when it comes to mixing AI with more traditional tools.

Social Media Examiner offers one marketer’s AI mix, which includes ChatGPT, OpusClip, Castmagic and Notion.

Observes writer Michael Stelzner: “AI can be a huge time-saver, helping with tasks that take up a lot of time but aren’t your favorite parts of content creation, like helping you to improve your writing for your landing pages and captions for your social media posts.”

*Google’s Answer to ChatGPT’s Dumber, Cheaper AI Engine: Google is out with a lighter-weight AI engine that’s not quite state-of-the-art — but is a lot cheaper to run.

Dubbed Gemma 2, the almost-as-good AI engine is part of a growing trend in AI in which industry players are offering slightly less formidable results in exchange for bargain rates.

Ultimately, it appears that the AI engine market may come to resemble the auto market in coming years — you’ll be able to choose from your Ferraris and your Mitsubishi Mirages — and everything in between.

*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 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.”

*Goodbye Scribbles: Digitizes Your Handwritten Notes With ChatGPT: The days of squinting at your scribbling to figure-out what you meant may be coming to an end.

ChatGPT is now able to ingest your handwritten notes — for free — so you can use them in the digital world.

Observes writer Sabrina Ortiz: “Sounds too good to be true? I thought the same, but after testing the tool, I can assure you that it works efficiently and quickly.

*University of Florida: Now With Artificial Intelligence: Add UF to the growing number of colleges and universities integrating AI into their writing courses.

Observes Zea Miller: ” “I’m preparing my students to compete across the AI landscape.

“We must build AI literacy so our students can thrive in this new world.”

*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: Facebook Founder Betting Billions More on AI: Despite fierce competition, Mark Zuckerberg is soldiering with continued new investment in AI, according to writer Mike Isaac.

Specifically, Facebook parent Meta invested $8.5 billion on AI in this year’s second quarter — and it may invest significantly more by year’s end, according to Isaac.

Observes Isaac: “The moves are driven by heavy investments in AI infrastructure, including data centers, chip designs and research and development.”

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 Shout Out appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

ChatGPT-Maker Releases New Bargain Version

OpenAI has released a new chatbot that’s almost as good as its flagship AI engine — ChatGPT 4o — and much cheaper to run.

Dubbed “ChatGPT 4o Mini,” the new AI engine is free-to-use on a limited basis to anyone visiting the ChatGPT Web site.

ChatGPT 4o Mini is expected to be a hit with developers looking to build AI applications atop the AI engine, which OpenAI says costs 60% less to run.

An important note: While ChatGPT 4o Mini is less advanced as the OpenAI flagship version, it’s still plenty smart.

ChatGPT 4o Mini, for example, beats-out the original AI software that powered ChatGPT to world fame and frenzy in late 2022, according to OpenAI test reports.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: 10 Best AI SEO Tools: Writers looking for a nice round-up of AI-powered tools specializing in search engine optimization may want to check-out this piece.

The guide offers a short-and-sweet summary of ten AI-powered SEO tools that writer Antoine Tardif considers tops.

Observes Tardif: “By leveraging these technologies, you can streamline your SEO efforts, produce high-quality content and improve your website’s visibility and user experience.”

*The MVP of AI Chatbots?: Facebook Founder Takes Another Swing for the Fences: Longtime AI evangelist Mark Zuckerberg has updated his challenge to ChatGPT, dubbed, Llama 3.1.

Observes writer Anuj Mudaliar: “While both models (AI engines) are thought to exhibit excellent performance in natural language processing, Llama 3.1’s relatively smaller parameter size may limit its ability to complete complex tasks, as GPT-4 works on 1.76 trillion parameters.

“However, practical performance is yet to be measured by users on a wide scale.”

*Très magnifique?: French AI Startup Says It’s Built a Better ChatGPT: French AI startup Mistral is out with its own competitor to ChatGPT, which it says matches — and sometimes exceeds — the market leader’s performance.

For example: Mistral’s ability to auto-generate accurate computer code is actually better than the most robust version of ChatGPT — ChatGPT 4o — according to the company.

Dubbed Mistral Large 2, the new AI engine is available on Google Vertex AI, Azure AI Studio, Amazon Bedrock and IBM watsonx.ai.

*Scribblers Rejoice!: Microsoft Promising to Transform Chicken Scratch Into Digital Gold: Users of MS Copilot in OneNote may soon have access to a tool that enables input into OneNote via handwritten stylus.

The overall goal is for MS Copilot to ingest the handwritten notes and then enable users to auto-generate written summaries, ask questions of the data they’ve entered and auto-generate to-do lists based on the notes.

Currently, the new tool is in beta testing.

*Can We Talk?: When Study Data Becomes a Conversationalist: Research software firm Recollective is out with a new AI tool that offers conversational access to qualitative research.

Observes Alfred Jay, CEO, Recollective: “Our new AI features are designed to complement and enhance the way researchers work, enabling them to focus on what truly matters: extracting actionable insights and creating compelling narratives.”

Specifically, researchers can pose targeted questions to the study data they’ve gathered and engage in a dialog with the research to unveil insights and trends they may have otherwise missed.

*Humanizey AI Hawks Solution to Bot-Babble: Writers looking for a more ‘human feel’ from writing auto-generated by AI may want to give AI Humanizer a test-drive.

The tool is designed to auto-rewrite text produced by AI chatbots so that it sounds more human.

Plus, the resulting, re-written text also should bypass detection as ‘AI generated’ when assessed by AI writing detectors such as GPTZero, Turnitin and Originality AI, according to David Holand, CEO, Humanizey AI.

*Another AI News Anchor Pops-Up: Because Humans Are So Yesterday: Add South Korean cable TV channel MBN to the growing list of news outlets using AI-powered news anchors to present the news.

This one is actually a knock-off of a human news anchor on the channel — Kim Ju-ha — and is programmed to look exactly like Ju-ha and mimic the female news anchor mannerisms.

Observes the AI bot, dubbed Al Kim: “I was created through deep learning 10 hours of video of Kim Ju-ha, learning the details of her voice, the way she talks, facial expressions, the way her lips move, and the way she moves her body.

“I am able to report news exactly the way that anchor Kim Ju-ha would.”

*Going for Google’s Jugular: ChatGPT-Maker Tinkers With New Search Engine: OpenAI is currently testing an AI-powered search engine it hopes will unseat Google as the King of Search.

Observes writer Deepa Seetharaman: “The tool, called SearchGPT, will summarize the information found on Web sites, including news sites and let users ask follow-up questions — just as they can currently with OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

“SearchGPT is OpenAI’s most direct challenge yet to Google’s dominance in search since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 caught the tech company flat-footed.”

*Fast Times at AI High: New Startup Looking to Build ‘AI-First’ Schools: Former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy is looking to redefine education by building new schools with AI at their core.

Karpathy describes his new venture, dubbed ‘Eureka Labs,’ as a “new kind of school that is AI native,” with the express aim of developing a “Teacher + AI symbiosis” that will allow “anyone to learn anything,” according to writer Andrew Tarantola.

Karpathy “envisions an education system built from the ground-up with AI as its core tenet — with human teachers developing lesson plans while being supplemented in the classroom by digital assistants,” Tarantola adds.

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 Dumber, Cheaper appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

ChatGPT-Generated Exam Answers Dupe Profs

Looks like college take-home tests are destined to suffer the same fate as the Dodo bird.

Instructors at a U.K. university learned as much after a slew of take-home exams featuring answers generated by ChatGPT passed with flying colors — all while evading virtually any suspicions of cheating.

Observes writer Richard Adams: “Researchers at the University of Reading fooled their own professors by secretly submitting AI-generated exam answers that went undetected and got better grades than real students.

“The university’s markers – who were not told about the project – flagged only one of the 33 entries.”

Observes Karen Yeung, a professor at the University of Birmingham: “The publication of this real-world quality assurance test demonstrates very clearly that the generative AI tools — freely and openly available — enable students to cheat take-home examinations without difficulty.”

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Lovo AI Text-to-Voice: Writers looking for a reliable text-to-voice solution may want to give Lovo AI a whirl, according to Sharqa Hameed.

Hameed’s guide on the product is extremely valuable in that it offers scores of step-by-step screenshots that truly give you a detailed look at how Lovo AI works.

Hameed’s verdict on the app: “Overall, I’d rate it 4 out of 5.

“It offers various valuable features, including Genny, Auto Subtitle Generator, Text to Speech, Online Video Editor, AI Art Generator, AI Writer and more.

“However, its free version limits you to convert up to 20 minutes of text to audio.”

*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.”

*Grand Claims, Meh Results: Google’s AI Falls Short: Apparently, Google’s Gemini — the AI that powers its direct competition to ChatGPT — is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Observes writer Kyle Wiggers: “In press briefings and demos, Google has repeatedly claimed that the models can accomplish previously impossible tasks thanks to their ‘long context.'”

Those tasks include summarizing multiple hundred-page documents or searching across scenes in film footage.

“But new research suggests that the models aren’t, in fact, very good at those things,” Wiggers adds.

*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.”

*Privacy Ninja: New AI Email Promises to Guard Your Secrets: Proton, an email provider long-prized for its heavy emphasis on privacy, has added AI to its mix.

Specifically, its newly released AI writing assistant ‘Proton Scribe’ is designed to help users auto-write and proofread their emails.

Observes writer Paul Sawers: “Proton Scribe can be deployed entirely at the local device level — meaning user data doesn’t leave the device.

“Moreover, Proton promises that its AI assistant won’t learn from user data — a particularly important feature for enterprise use cases, where privacy is paramount.”

*Forget Solitaire: Claude Turns AI Writing into a Collaborative Party Game: ChatGPT competitor Claude has a new feature that enables users to publish, share and remix the AI writing and other content that they generate with one another.

Observes writer Eric Hal Schwartz: “Essentially, you can open published ‘Artifacts’ created by others and modify or build upon them through conversations with Claude.

“Anthropic is pitching it as a way to foster a collaborative environment.”

*Robo Lawyer: For Many Attorneys, AI Still a Boogeyman: Despite its considerable benefits to the legal community, AI is viewed warily by many lawyers and pros.

Specifically, 77% of professionals recently surveyed by Thomson Reuters saw AI as a threat to lawyers.

Observes Artificial Lawyer: “While some very innovative lawyers are comfortable with AI and have few worries about the legal world’s imminent demise, there are plenty of lawyers out there who still feel very uncertain about what this all means for them, the profession, and their firms.”

*ChatGPT Mind-Meld: New Hope For the Paralyzed: A man slowly succumbing to paralysis has been given new hope with ChatGPT, which is enabling him to text using his brain waves.

Using a brain implant, the man is able to translate his thoughts into text commands — generated by ChatGPT — which he uses to operate computerized communication devices.

Observes the patient: “You get choices of how you might respond in several different ways.

“So rather than me typing single words, I’m hitting one or two buttons or clicks, if you will, and I’ve got the majority of a sentence done.”

*AI Big Picture: AI Gold Rush Still Runs Hot: Nearly 20 months after ChatGPT introduced a stunned world to the potential of AI, businesses across the world are still clamoring to bring the newly commercialized tech onboard.

Observes writer Ben Dickson: “Most organizations are spending hefty amounts to either explore generative AI use cases or have already implemented them in production,” according to a new survey of 200 IT leaders.

“Nearly three-fourths (73%) of respondents plan to spend more than $500,000 on generative AI in the next 12 months, with almost half (46%) allocating more than $1 million,” Dickson adds.

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 Won’t Get Fooled Again appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Says Microsoft: We’re going to help ourselves to your Web content, thank you

Apparently, when it comes to copyright law, Microsoft never got the memo.

According to Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s CEO of AI, as reported by writer Sean Endicott: “With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been that it is fair use.

“Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding.”

The only currently ‘in-dispute’ exception to Microsoft’s ‘I’ll-help-myself, thanks’ perspective, according to Suleyman, are Web sites and publishers that explicitly state on their Web sites “do not scrape or crawl me for any other reason than indexing me so that other people can find that content.”

And according to Suleyman, even that warning is a ‘gray area’ that he believes will wind up in the courts.

Really?

That’s news to me.

Perhaps Sulyman should visit the U.S. Copyright Office on the Web, whose history domain documents that the first copyright law was enacted in the U.S. in 1790.

In other news and analysis on AI writing:

*In-Depth Guide: Snapshot on the Big Four in AI Writing: Writers looking for the latest on AI writing from the Big Four — OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Facebook parent Meta — can check-out this latest update.

The piece offers perspectives on the tech from a number of digitally oriented businesses based in India.

Observes Sajal Gupta, chief executive, Kiaos Marketing, a digital marketing consultancy: “The key is to integrate AI so seamlessly into your toolkit that it appears as natural as it possibly can.

“From a consumer’s perspective, if the tools are implemented well, the experience will only improve.”

*Google Adding It’s New AI to Gmail, Other Products: Many Gmail users already have access to new generative AI from Google, which they can use for auto-writing text, summarizing an email thread, searching through their inbox using AI — and more.

Powered by Google’s Gemini AI engine, the new feature can be found on Gmail’s side panel and can be activated with a click.

Roll-out of the new AI — which will also be popping up in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive — should be complete by the close of July

*Microsoft Adds ChatGPT Competitor to its AI Offerings: Making good on its commitment to featuring a wide spectrum of AI services throughout its product line, Microsoft is integrating Writesonic into its Azure cloud infrastructure.

The ChatGPT competitor — which specializes in content creation and search engine optimization — gets to showcase its chops to businesses already using Azure.

*ChatGPT Competitor Gets an Upgrade: AI writing pioneer Writer has just launched an upgrade capable of ingesting and analyzing a document of up to 10 million words.

Observes Deanna Dong, product marketing lead, Writer: “We know that enterprises need to analyze very long files, work with long research papers, or documentation. It’s a huge use case for them.”

Also new with the upgrade is added transparency into what Writer’s AI is going.

Observes writer Michael Nunez: “The system shows users the steps the AI takes — including how it breaks down queries into sub-questions and which specific data sources it references.”

*Multi-Faceted AI Copywriter for Marketing Released: Given that automated AI writing is essentially a commodity now, startups specializing in AI marketing tools are increasingly coming out with offerings that do much more.

Singapore-based Addlly AI is no exception.

The company just released a beefed-up automated writing tool that is able to reference brand data — and incorporate analytical insights gleaned from social listening –as it creates copy for marketers.

Observes Tina Chopra, CEO, Addlly AI: “By merging cutting-edge AI technology with valuable data insights, we help businesses produce content that’s not just fast and more targeted, but also highly relevant and impactful.”

*New AI-Automated Email Service Launches: CallSine is offering a new email marketing service that uses customer data to auto-generate highly personalized email marketing pitches.

Observes Logan Kelly, president, CallSine: “Unlike generic AI tools, we build a detailed knowledge base about your company and prospects.

“This allows us to use AI to generate truly relevant and tailored messaging beyond acknowledging a prospect’s standard profile information.”

*New AI-for-Lawyers Startup Wins a Trial Run: Legal tech AI service Leya — which offers lawyers auto-writing of draft contracts and similar AI services — has scored a tryout with law firm Bird & Bird.

Observes Karen Jacks, chief technology officer, Bird & Bird, added: “This proof of concept trial with Leya is the latest addition to our GenAI toolkit and will be an important part of our five-year strategy as we guide organizations through a world shaped by technology, innovation and regulation, and driving the transformation of legal services delivery.”

*Growing Pains: Another Unsupervised AI News Site Goes Rogue: When will they learn?

Tennis tournament Wimbeldon became the latest organization to realize that while AI auto-written content sure is convenient — it still needs human supervision right now.

Wimbledon’s blunder: It’s AI-powered ‘Catch-Me-Up’ news services — designed to auto-write pre-and-post-match player profiles with AI-generated stories and analysis — began spitting-out error-ridden copy on its first day of use.

Observes writer Emine Sinmaz: “The new offering on Wimbledon’s app and website described the former US Open champion Emma Raducanu as the British No 1, although she is the No 3. The 21-year-old who grew up in Bromley was also described as having won 11 matches so far this year, when she has had 14 triumphs.

“It also described a clash between 35-year-old Zhang Shuai, a two-time doubles grand slam champion from China who is on a losing streak, and Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, 27, as an “eagerly anticipated encounter between two up-and-coming players.”

As many have uttered down through the ages: Trust — by verify.

*AI Big Picture: ChatGPT Maker Gets Real About AI and the Military: AI users concerned that increasing breakthoughs in AI may be falling into the wrong hands should be cheered by the appointment of Paul M. Nakasone — a former director of the U.S. National Security Agency — to the board of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Granted, many ‘effective altruists’ are sure to decry the new presence of a military perspective on AI’s board.

But there are plenty of others who believe the U.S. needs to continually ‘what-if’ how AI may be used nefariously and how to protect against it — given that there are plenty of rogue nations already deeply engaged in the pursuit.

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 Sticky Fingers appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

Courtesy ChatGPT and Grammarly

Among ChatGPT’s myriad editorial skills is its ability to proofread your text at an extremely high level of proficiency.

And if all you’re looking for is an occasional proofread, you’ll find you can get help from ChatGPT — combined with similar AI tools — for free.

I began using ChatGPT as a back-up proofer for my primary proofreading tool — Grammarly — after I saw it consistently catching errors in text that Grammarly was missing.

Granted, the errors ChatGPT catches are generally minuscule (Grammarly really is an excellent proofreading tool, among its many other charms).

But sometimes, ChatGPT does catch outright misspellings that simply fly by Grammarly.

And on average, I find that ChatGPT spotlights about one-to-three errors that are missed by Grammarly per one thousand words of text.

One of the great beauties of creating a proofreading prompt for ChatGPT (a sample of one of mine follows) is that you can design it to do proofreading exactly as you prefer.

My proofer prompt, for example, instructs ChatGPT to retype the entire text it’s proofing, highlight each error it finds in bold, offer a suggested correction — and then explain its rationale for making each correction.

That may be overkill for some people.

But I prefer double-checking ChatGPT’s work myself and being given a sound reason for making a change — rather than simply trusting ChatGPT to ‘correct’ my text with no oversight.

I also greatly appreciate that I can add new rules to my ChatGPT proofer — or take some rules away — by simply changing a few words in the prompt.

And I really like the fact that my proofer grows more powerful with every upgrade of ChatGPT’s software.

For example: The ChatGPT proofer I use most (below) is more powerful and more meticulous in its proofreading when used with the most advanced version of ChatGPT — ChatGPT 4o — as compared to its use with previous versions of ChatGPT.

As with many things ChatGPT, your success designing a proofer hinges mightily on the precise wording of your prompt.

Sure, you can design a proofer with something simple like: “You are an expert proofreader. Please proofread the following text and highlight the errors in bold.”

But I’ve had better luck using a longer prompt that spells out — in excruciating detail — exactly what I’m looking for.

For example: In addition to asking for an error scan, I also ask ChatGPT to be meticulous as it’s scanning, to focus intensely on its task, to get extremely granular in its inspection (such as identifying correct placement of periods) and similar.

But simultaneously, I’m also careful not to overload ChatGPT with too many different kinds of requests in a single prompt — which can needlessly slow down ChatGPT, or even confuse it entirely.

As previously indicated, if you’re only looking to do some occasional proofreading, you can do so for free using ChatGPT and other tools and still enjoy a high level of performance.

For example: You can sign-up for Grammarly’s free version, which will do a basic, highly effective proofread of your text at absolutely no charge.

And then you can head over to ChatGPT, where you can double-check Grammarly’s work using free, limited access to ChatGPT’s most advanced AI engine, ChatGPT 4o.

Granted, you can only input about 15 prompts every three hours using ChatGPT-4o’s free version.

But if you only have a few documents to double-check for proofing, you’re all set.

For more extended, free proofing, you can also use Grammarly in combination with Gemini Advanced — Google’s direct competitor to ChatGPT-4o.

The reason: Gemini Advanced is based on the same genre of AI technology that powers ChatGPT. So a prompt developed for use with ChatGPT will also work flawlessly with Gemini Advanced.

Plus, Gemini Advanced currently offers an extremely generous, two-month free trial.

So chances are, you can theoretically proof an entire book if you so desired — over time — just using Grammarly’s free version, in concert with the Google Gemini Advanced’s free trial.

Another bonus: Given that the lion’s share of AI writers/tools on the market right now use the same genre of AI technology as ChatGPT and Gemini Advanced, you can also use any prompt initially developed for ChatGPT in any other AI tool based on the same genre of AI tech, including:

Jasper

Sudowrite

Anyword

INK

Scalenut

Neuraltext

Writesonic

Wordtune

Sapling

Notion Labs

Copy.ai

Rytr

Chibi AI

Surfer

Article Forge

WordAI

AI Writer

Hypotenuse AI

Longshot

CreaitorAI

CopySmith

OpenAI

Writer

GrowthBar

Closerscopy

ParagraphAI

Frase

A final tip before we take a look at a sample proofer: It’s always best to design your proofer as a stand-alone prompt — followed by a second prompt that you use to actually input the text you want proofed.

This technique ensures that you’re not giving ChatGPT too many words and/or too much data to process in any one prompt.

Even better: Inputting your text in a second prompt also expands the number of words ChatGPT will proofread for you, given that ChatGPT can only process and understand so many words in any given prompt.

In any event, here’s one of the homespun proofers I use when I’m proofing with Grammarly and I’m looking for ChatGPT to do an extremely granular double-check of Grammarly’s work:

Joe Dysart’s Proofer Prompt:

[You are a seasoned, award-winning expert in proofreading. Please conduct a meticulous, line-by-line proofread of text that I will provide you in the next prompt.

Focus intensely on the following aspects:

*Technical Accuracy: Identify and correct errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and formatting.

*Other Technical Errors: Identify and correct other technical errors not specifically listed in this prompt.

*Correct Placement of Periods and Quotes: Pay special attention to the placement of periods and quotes. Identify and correct any incorrect placement of periods and quotes and incorrect spacing associated with them.

*Consistency: Identify and correct inconsistent use of terminology, names, spelling, formatting and internal style rules (if applicable).

*Specific Conventions: Verify that the following conventions are employed:

~Allow the use of slang
~Allow the use of sentence fragments
~Allow the use of sentences that start with And
~Allow the use of sentences that start with But

To report the errors you find:

*Preserve Original: Retype the entire text with your changes.

*Highlight Errors: Highlight each error you find in bold.

*Provide Correction: Offer your correction for each error in parentheses directly after the bolded error.

*Explain Correction: For each correction you make using boldface type, please explain the correction, also in boldface type, using the format in the following example, which is delineated by three quote symbols “””solider (soldier) — The word soldier was misspelled.”””

*Always keep in mind your overarching goal: Your overarching goal is to provide the most comprehensive, meticulous proofreading of the text as possible.

Please indicate that you fully understand these proofreading instructions and have stored the instructions with the statement: I fully understand these proofreading instructions and have stored the instructions. Please input the text you’d like proofread with your next prompt using the words, “Here’s the text to proofread:”]

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 Free AI-Powered Proofreading appeared first on Robot Writers AI.

A slew of major stories in AI writing that broke in Q2 have made the future for writers and editors crystal clear: The wholesale transition of writing-by-humans to writing-by-AI-machines has begun.

Fading are the days when publishers and AI evangelists hid behind the euphemism that AI writers are just Silicon buddies looking to shoulder the drudge work so their human counterparts can do more interesting work.

And in their place are increasingly candid, bald admissions — or unquestionable evidence of the same — of a common-sense reality that anyone paying close attention to AI has known for years.

Specifically: If words are your stock-in-trade and AI-powered machines can do your kind of writing much faster — and much more inexpensively — it makes no sense to keep you employed.

A few examples of that new reality from Q2:

~Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, predicts that AI will ultimately usurp 95% of all marketing work currently performed by agencies, strategists and creatives

~The BBC reports that a publisher reduced its writing and editorial staff from 60+ to a single, lone editor — simply by switching to AI

~A Swedish financial company reduced its marketing costs by $10 million, simply by funneling that marketing work to AI rather than to outside, human creatives

~WPP — the world’s largest ad agency — cut a deal to bring in Google Gemini, a ChatGPT competitor, to help write ad scripts, auto-create narration and auto-generate product images

~Newsweek announced it’s all-in on AI and has plans to integrate the tech into the magazine’s operations as deeply as possible

Granted, news editors and reporters still have some cover, given that AI in many instances still does not have the trust and sources to unearth new data from the world — and then work that new information into news stories.

But for writers in marketing, copywriting and similar jobs who are playing around with ideas and concepts — but not bringing fresh data to their audiences — there is only one recourse: They need to get smart, very quickly, on how to best leverage AI writing tools in their day-to-day work.

And once they’re up-to-speed, they need to engage with that AI knowing that like the 60+ copywriting shop that was shrunken down to a single editor by AI, they still may be out-the-door — no matter how sophisticated their AI smarts.

Here’s detail on the wholesale migration, along with other key stories that shaped the growing impact of AI writing in Q2:

*ChatGPT CEO: AI Will Usurp 95% of Marketing Work: In a stunning moment of candor, ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman has stated that AI will usurp 95% of all the marketing work currently performed by agencies, strategists and creatives.

Altman’s prediction can be found in a new book — offered by subscription — “Our AI Journey,” by Adam Brotman and Andy Sack.

Observes Mike Kaput, chief content officer, Marketing AI Institute, in reaction to Altman’s reported prediction: “To say it blew us away is an understatement.”

Altman’s exact words, according to Brotman and Sack, were: “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.

“And the AI will likely be able to test the creative against real or synthetic customer focus groups for predicting results and optimizing.

“Again — all free, instant and nearly perfect. Images, videos, campaign ideas? No problem.”

For more on Altman’s revelation, check out this riveting article by Kaput.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

*The Myth of the ‘Cheery, AI Collaborator’: AI Reduces 60+ Copywriting Team to One Editor: In yet another bone-chilling example of how AI is hollowing-out copywriting teams, this BBC report details how AI turned a 60+ copywriting team into a one-man operation.

First introduced by the publisher in 2023, AI slowly began to usurp more and more jobs until by 2024, everyone on the team was vaporized save for one, lone editor.

Observes the last of the team, who chooses to remain anonymous: “All of a sudden, I was just doing everyone’s job.

“Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting-out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language.

“It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits. The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot.”

That account is a long way from current-day AI evangelism, which insists AI is little more than a warm-and-fuzzy friend who will always help you — and never hurt.

For editors and writers who are not tasked with unearthing fresh news data in their jobs, the message is clear: Increasingly, staying alive in copyediting has become a fight to be ‘the last one standing.’

*Pink Slip Heaven: Scores of Jobs Go Bye-Bye as Marketing Department Embraces AI: Remember that cheerful AI assistant and ‘collaborator’ that was going to free-up your days so you could indulge in much more meaningful work?

It just took your job.

Writer Megan Graham reports that $10 million worth of marketing work that would have gone to content creators for a Swedish financial company is now handled by AI.

Observes Graham: “Using generative AI tools such as Midjourney and DALL-E saved the company $1.5 million on image production costs in the first quarter — while slashing its image development timeline to seven days from six weeks.

“Klarna also said it had decreased by 25% its spending on external marketing suppliers (code-phrase for editors, writers and graphic artists) for tasks such as social media, translation and production.”

*Newsweek Goes Full AI: Reporters That Boot-up in Seconds: Brushing aside fears of editorial job loss, Newsweek has fully embraced AI and is looking to integrate the tech as deeply as possible into the magazine’s operations.

Says Jennifer Cunningham, executive editor, Newsweek: “I think that the difference between newsrooms that embrace AI and newsrooms that shun AI is really going to prove itself over the next several months and years.

“We have really embraced AI as an opportunity — and not some sort of boogeyman that’s lurking in the newsroom.”

We’ll see.

*Dreams Of AI Mojo: World’s Largest Ad Agency Partners With Google: In a head-turning move, WPP — parent company of some of the biggest agencies in advertising — has reached-out to Google for AI enhancement.

Specifically, the company is looking to integrate Google’s Gemini AI into its services to auto-write ad scripts, automate ad narration and auto-generate product images.

Observes Stephan Pretorious, Chief Technology Officer, WPP: “I believe this will be a game-changer for our clients and the marketing industry at large.”

*AI Now Crafts Fictional Characters While You Nap: AI pioneer Sudowrite is promising a new module writers can use to auto-build personality traits, background, physical appearances and mannerisms for fictional characters.

Also promised is a new world-building tool that will enable writers to auto-design fictional worlds ranging from dystopian cities to magical realms.

The AI tool — which uses AI engines like GPT-4 and Claude 3 to work its magic — will also be enhanced system-wide to enable writers to auto-generate fiction more efficiently.

*Apple Goes All In on ChatGPT: It’s official: One of the world’s richest and mightiest tech companies has turned to ChatGPT to bring AI to its smartphone.

A major coup for ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI, the deal will bring ChatGPT to millions of iPhone users who are running — or will be running — iOS 18 software on their devices.

The Times of India also reports that Apple may feature ChatGPT competitors on its iPhone as well — such as Google Gemini.

But so far, no such deals have been inked.

*Thousands of Free, ChatGPT Competitors Pop-Up on the Web: Thousands of free, alternative versions of a new AI engine released by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame are popping-up on the Web.

The reason: Zuckerberg released his new AI engine — dubbed Llama 3 –as free, open source code that can be downloaded and altered by anyone interested in doing a little tinkering.

This is great news for consumers, given that thousands upon thousands of AI pros are coming up with competitive — and free — AI alternatives to proprietary AI solutions like ChatGPT.

That forces market leaders like OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT — to continually develop ever-more-sophisticated versions of their tech.

And it makes it much tougher for OpenAI and similar proprietary companies to raise prices aggressively when thousands of free alternatives abound.

*Less Popular Than Your Average Cat Video: Only 23% of U.S. Adults Have Tried ChatGPT: Nearly a year-and-a-half since ChatGPT first stunned the world, only 23% of U.S. adults have actually used it, according to a new study from Pew.

For many who track the tech closely — and see the emergence of ChatGPT and similar AI as a pivotal moment in the history of humanity — the meager adoption rate is tough to understand.

Not surprisingly, young adults under 30 are most enthusiastic about ChatGPT — 43% have tried the AI.

Oldest adults, 65-and-up, are least interested in the tech — only 6% have tried the tool, according to Pew.

*AI Smarter Than Many Humans By 2027?: If it feels like we’re all living in a sci-fi movie that’s ready to careen off a cliff into AI oblivion, don’t blame Leopold Aschenbrenner.

His firsthand take on the potential devastation ahead — courtesy of AI — leaves him no choice but to sound the alarm.

A former researcher for OpenAI — maker of ChatGPT — Aschenbrenner warns that AI is moving so fast, we could see AI that’s as smart as an AI engineer by 2027.

Even more head-turning: Once AI is operating at that intellectual level, it’s just another jump or two — perhaps another few years — until we literally have “many millions” of virtual AI entities that have taken over the ever-increasing sophistication of AI, Aschenbrenner says.

Observes Aschenbrenner: “Rather than a few hundred researchers and engineers at a leading AI lab, we’d have more than one hundred thousand times that—(AI agents) furiously working on algorithmic breakthroughs, day and night.

“Before we know it, we would have super-intelligence on our hands — AI systems vastly smarter than humans, capable of novel, creative, complicated behavior we couldn’t even begin to understand.”

In essence, AI will have created its own digital civilization.

And it’s highly feasible that civilization would be populated by “several billions” of super-intelligent AI entities, according to Aschenbrenner.

The stomach-churning problem with that scenario: Given the human greed to possess such vast AI power unilaterally, it’s very likely that the U.S. could find itself in an all-or-nothing race with China to dominate AI.

Even worse: The U.S. could find itself in an all-out war with China to dominate AI.

Granted, it seems that for every in-the-know AI researcher like Aschenbrenner, there’s another equally qualified AI researcher who insists those fears are extremely overblown.

Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta — Facebook’s parent company — for example, believes that such AI gloom-and-doom nightmares are misguided and premature.

Even so, Aschenbrenner has staked his professional reputation on his assertions.

And he’s offered his complete analysis of what could be in a 156-page treatise entitled, “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead.”

(Gratefully, Aschenbrenner’s tome is rendered in a conversational, engaging and enthusiastic writing style.)

For close followers of AI who are looking to evaluate a definitive perspective on how our world could be completely transformed beyond our imaginations — within the next decade — Aschenbrenner’s treatise is a must-read.

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, Q2 2024 appeared first on Robot Writers AI.