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Just a week ago, OpenAI, the developer of the well-known generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, has released the newest function of the chatbot. It is now able to access the internet and is therefore able to provide real-time information to its users. Prior to this newest capability, ChatGPT’s access was limited to information up to September 2021 (Vleugels & van Wijnen, 2023).

Users can now give prompts asking about current events, consult news websites or provide help with technical research. Not only will the output be more relevant and current, but it will also be accompanied by direct links to its sources. For now, this feature is only available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers but will soon be accessible to every user. Although this sounds very promising, there are some dangers involved, as is the case with almost every new AI update. What happens, for example, when you post something online but remove it moments later? It is unclear how OpenAI works and whether this is in accordance with the law. How do they process such data? Questions like these arise when tech companies are not fully transparent about their processes (Vleugels & van Wijnen, 2023).

Besides this recent update, OpenAI has also released voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT. These allow you to have a more intuitive type of interface and gives users more ways to utilize ChatGPT. You can for example take a picture of what is in your fridge and ask it to plan a meal, or let it help you with homework. With the voice capabilities, it is possible to have an actual conversation on the go, let it tell you a bedtime story or propose a debate topic (OpenAI, 2023). Again, with these updates, there are some risks attached. Can you rely on ChatGPT’s interpretation of an image when there are high stakes involved? How can they avoid malicious use of the voice technology when people try to impersonate others?

OpenAI is aware of these risks and that is why they make their tools gradually available. This allows them to make improvements and mitigate risks. However, in my opinion, they should only release those updates when they are one hundred percent sure that it works correctly and cannot be used maliciously. I think it is always better to be safe than sorry. On the other hand, OpenAI can only fix these problems once it has been made aware of the pitfalls, and that only happens when the tools are used. What are your thoughts on this? Do you support OpenAI’s way of working, which is to make the tools gradually available?

References

OpenAI. (2023, September 25). ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-can-now-see-hear-and-speak

Vleugels, A., & Van Wijnen, J. F. (2023, September 28). ChatGPT geeft nu actuele antwoorden, maar niet op de prangendste vraag. FD.nl. https://fd.nl/tech-en-innovatie/1491136/chatgpt-geeft-nu-actuele-antwoorden-maar-niet-op-de-prangendste-vraag?utm_medium=social&utm_source=app&utm_campaign=earned&utm_content=20230929&utm_term=app-ios&gift=1RO9r

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It has almost been a year since ChatGPT, the generative AI tool from OpenAI, became available to the public. Within this year, the chatbot has undergone many developments, such as analysing images or having a voice conversation, but with these developments ethical and intellectual property issues also arise. For instance, recently a group of seventeen authors has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer (ChatGPT) is trained with a combination of reinforcement learning algorithms and around 150 billion parameters of human input (Dowling & Lucey, 2023) and can therefore interact with users in a human-like way. And so, the answers given by the chatbot are based on millions of different texts, among which also the books of these writers. Users of ChatGPT have written texts which resemble those of famous authors. For instance, a fan of the book series ‘A song of ice and fire’ used ChatGPT to write the unreleased last parts of the book series in the authors’ writing style.

The lawsuit will take place in New York and is the initiative of the American writers’ association ‘Authors Guild’. These authors, among whom Jason Grisham and George R. R. Martin, have filed a lawsuit as it is their opinion that although the texts are not being sold by the fan, their writing style and book characters are being ‘stolen’. Therefore, they argue that their livelihoods are at risk since their texts are being used without payment (NOS, 2023).

The same phenomenon is also happening in the world of art. AI technology such as Dall-E or Midjourney are fed with data to detect the patterns of images. When users create new images, they still contain the style of the original work. This again raises questions regarding intellectual property (Shi, 2023). However, to avoid issues like these, Getty Images for example, has invented an AI tool that is trained with royalty-free photos from their image database. Users can now create new images without infringing copyrights (NU.nl, 2023).

What are your thoughts about this? Would you consider this plagiarism like the Authors Guild does or would you consider it a new piece of work?

References:

Dowling, M., & Lucey, B. M. (2023). ChatGPT for (Finance) research: The Bananarama Conjecture. Finance Research Letters, 53, 103662. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2023.103662

NOS. (2023, September 21). Amerikaanse schrijvers, onder wie John Grisham, klagen maker van ChatGPT aan. NOS. https://nos.nl/artikel/2491247-amerikaanse-schrijvers-onder-wie-john-grisham-klagen-maker-van-chatgpt-aan

NU.nl. (2023, September 26). Je kunt straks zelf rechtenvrije plaatjes maken met AI-tool van Getty Images. NU.nl. https://www.nu.nl/tech/6282593/je-kunt-straks-zelf-rechtenvrije-plaatjes-maken-met-ai-tool-van-getty-images.html

Shi. (2023, July 17). Paint, Pixels, and Plagiarism: The Rise of Generative AI and the. . . Towards AI. https://towardsai.net/p/machine-learning/paint-pixels-and-plagiarism-the-rise-of-generative-ai-and-the-uncertain-future-of-art