Hello and welcome to AI insider, the every now and then newsletter that brings you occasional updates from the world of artificial intelligence. In plain English. Your hosts: Bing, Bard, ChatGPT, and Michelle Johnson, retired journalist and journalism professor. If you like what you see here, feel free to subscribe and maybe even donate. Thank you to our new donors! The email edition looks snazzier thanks to you!
Following Threads
As I said in a Facebook post, the biggest news in Tech over the last couple of days was the launch of a new social media platform called Threads. See the post for my thoughts. ( — Michelle Johnson)
UN AI Event Features Robotic Presser
The United Nations just had a big summit about how AI can help make the world a better place. The AI Summit for Good took place on July 6-7, in Geneva, Switzerland, and online. It featured more than 200 speakers from various fields and sectors, including scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and UN officials.
The global event, sponsored by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), focuses on how AI can be used to address everything from poverty to climate change, health, education and more.
But the coolest part of this gathering was the press conference with robots! Yes, you read that right. Robots! Nine of them and their creators were there to answer questions from reporters in Geneva on July 7. The robots showed off their skills and personalities, and also talked about some of the important stuff around AI and robotics.
The event, which was billed as the world’s first news conference featuring humanoid robots, was an opportunity to showcase the capabilities of these machines, as well as to discuss their potential to help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. ( — Bing, Bard)
Watch some highlights of the presser here:
Is ChatGPT Losing Its Momentum?
ChatGPT, the online chatbot that can generate content and answer questions, has been one of the most sensational phenomena in the AI world since its launch in late November 2022. Within two months, it reached 100 million monthly active users, setting a world record as the fastest-growing consumer application in history. However, according to the latest data from Similarweb, a web analytics company, ChatGPT’s growth seems to have flattened.
Similarweb’s report shows that ChatGPT attracted about 1.76 billion visits worldwide in April, up 12.6% from March. While this is an impressive number, it is much lower than the month-over-month growth rates of 131.6% in January, 62.5% in February, and 55.8% in March. The report also reveals that ChatGPT’s traffic within the U.S. is not as intense as its global traffic, with 187.6 million visits in April, up 17.5% month-over-month.
One possible reason for ChatGPT’s slowing growth is the emergence of competitors and alternatives that leverage similar or better AI technology. For example, Google Bard, which launched in beta in February at bard.google.com, hit 142.6 million visits in May, up 187.2% from April 4. Bard and Microsoft’s Bing (which runs on a version of ChatGPT 4) can browse the web, generate images and more based on user prompts.
Subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can get access to more advanced features such as plugins.
Other reasons ChatGPT traffic may have dropped: School is out, so fewer students are using it for assignments and, hey, it’s summertime. Maybe people are enjoying vacations rather than chatting with bots.
In any case, ChatGPT remains one of the most popular and influential examples of generative AI on the web today. It will be interesting to see how it evolves and adapts to the changing market and user demands. ( — Bing, Michelle Johnson )
ChatGPT Browsing Yanked
Paying ChatGPT Plus customers lost a key feature this week. OpenAI recalled the internet browse function from ChatGPT 4 because they said it was pulling stuff from the interwebs that it shouldn’t be touching. Example: Content behind paywalls that the user doesn’t subscribe to.
They hope to have the feature back up and running soon.
If you’ve used ChatGPT you may have run into the 2021 firewall. It doesn’t have any knowledge beyond that date. Being able to access more recent content from the internet is a bonus.
Reminder: These products are betas. They’re still in development, so things will change. Sometimes when you least expect it. Mantra: Go with the flow.
And in the meantime, use Microsoft’s Bing or Google’s Bard. Since they’re both tied to search engines, they have more access to current info and events. ( — Michelle Johnson)
Study Surveys Feelings, Fears about AI
AI is changing the world, but how do people feel about it? A new survey by The Verge and Vox Media reveals some of the hopes, fears, and experiences of Americans with AI-powered tools.
The survey, conducted in June 2023, polled more than 2,000 U.S. adults on their thoughts, feelings, and fears about AI. The results show that while most people have heard of ChatGPT, the popular online chatbot that can generate content and answer questions, few have actually tried it themselves. Among those who have tried ChatGPT, a majority report it has been at least somewhat useful.
But ChatGPT is not the only AI-powered tool that people are using or hearing about. The survey also asked about other tools that use image generation, face swapping, music composition, and more. The results show that use of these tools is still fairly limited, and that most people are not familiar with the companies and startups that make them. However, younger users are more likely to have used or heard of these tools than older users.
The survey also reveals some interesting insights into how people perceive the potential and the risks of AI. For example, most people agree that AI can be beneficial for education, entertainment, and creativity, but they also express concerns about its impact on jobs, privacy, and society. Some people also worry about the possibility of AI becoming smarter than humans or being used for malicious purposes.
Overall, the survey paints a picture of an emerging, uncertain, and exciting technology — where many have yet to use it, many are fearful of its potential, and many still have great hopes for what it could someday do for them. ( — Bing)
What’s Ahead? Humane AI and Google Styledrop
Here’s an update on two things you may not have heard about. I know I haven’t seen much coverage of either one beyond tech publications.
Story 1: A company called Humane AI announced a new product called the Ai Pin on June 30. Founded by a couple of former Apple employees who managed to score a ton of money to launch the company a couple of years ago, Humane has apparently been kind of hush, hush about what they are up to until now.
Turns out they are making what I think could be a smart bet. As snazzy as Apple’s new Vision Pro headset may appear, Humane is betting that we won’t be happy about strapping a heavy device onto our faces no matter how cool-looking or smart it is. Their Ai Pin (aka Personal Mobile Computer) looks like it can easily clip onto a jacket lapel or pocket. It can project images into the palm of your hand. So, for instance, you could read email or texts on your palm.
As an owner of a Quest 2 headset that I rarely use because it’s kind of uncomfortable to wear, I think Humane has a point. If they can create something that’s lightweight and useful, they may have a winner.
Reality check: Other companies have tried to make lightweight wearable tech and failed. A few years ago I bought a “smart ring” from Amazon, an Alexa device that was supposed to keep me up to date on my messages, create shopping lists, etc. It barely worked, and was hard to hear (tiny speakers). Amazon shelved it. They’re still selling a pair of connected eyeglasses, but it’s not like you hear about them every day.
If you’re interested in seeing Humane’s pin at work, check out this Ted Talk by company co-founder, Imran Chaudhri. One of the coolest features is real-time language translation.
If you want to be kept in the loop about Ai Pin, you can sign up for the waitlist here. ( — Michelle Johnson)
Story 2: You may be hearing about generative AI image creators like Midjourney or Adobe Firefly, but something called Google Styledrop, which is still in the research phase, could be an even bigger deal. Why?
These tools allow you to write a text prompt and generate an image. You can even tell it to create it in the style of a particular artist or genre. Having tried this for the past few months, I can report that sometimes it hits the mark, but many times it misses. Fixing the problems can take some fiddling around with the text, and even then you still may not get exactly what you want.
The Google Styledrop team describes the problem this way:
“While many efforts have been put into ‘prompt engineering,’ a wide range of styles are simply hard to describe in text form, due to the nuances of color schemes, illumination and other characteristics. As an example, Van Gogh has paintings in different styles. Thus, a text prompt that simply says “Van Gogh” may either result in one specific style (selected at random), or in an unpredictable mix of several styles. Neither of these is a desirable outcome”.
Apparently, Styledrop has had some success at generating more accurate images of this type. This YouTube video by TheAIGrid offers up a good explanation of how this works.
There’s nothing more to know about Styledrop now because it’s not a product yet. At this point it’s still experimental as described in this research paper. But when it drops you can say, “Yeah, I read about that a while ago in Michelle Johnson’s newsletter.” ( — Michelle Johnson)
Fun Stuff to Try
- Is it real? Or is it cake? Wondering if that nicely written memo was crafted by ChatGPT (or Bard)? Run it through this detector to check: GPTZero. It busted Bing’s post above about the AI survey as 100 percent likely to have been written by AI.
- Text to Gif? Yep. You can create an animated Gif just by typing a description into Picsart’s AI Gif generator.
- If you use the Chrome web browser and spend time on YouTube, you might be interested in installing the AI extension ChatTube. Generally, unless there’s a live chat we’re used to video yammering at us. But ChatTube, which runs on ChatGPT lets you talk to it. You can ask questions such as: What’s this video about? Does the reviewer recommend this product?
AI Aht Gallery (Yeah, I spelled that right. This is Boston, dammit!)
(Adobe Firefly)
That’s all for this edition of AI insider. I hope you enjoyed reading it and learned something new. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future topics, please let me know by replying to this email. Thank you for subscribing and donating! See you next time! 😊