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Summary – In this article, we get real about the launch Chat GPT, and its potential applications in industries such as marketing, e-commerce, and software development, while also examining the concerns surrounding propaganda, cybersecurity, job displacement, copyright, and the impact of generative AI on creativity and human exploration.

We recently had the chance to explore the topic of ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI for an article in CMSWire.  Since that article was published, OpenAI  has recently launched a new version of ChatGPT, GPT-4, which it says is more robust, accurate and less biased than its predecessor. It’s creating quite a stir in the industry. Yet, while the new generation of the system is getting rave reviews for being much more advanced than the earlier version, it’s still a new technology. As with all new things, it’s important to take a step back from the hype, weigh the benefits, and identify the caveats.

Some of the most promising industries where ChatGPT can augment human activities include the following:

Marketing: These systems can help jumpstart marketing campaigns, creating taglines, developing blog posts or other types of content. 

Ecommerce: ChatGPT can play a role in customer service, answering customer questions, providing more information on the company’s products and services and anticipating new questions.

Software Development: Software programmers are already using AI to generate code using Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, which employs OpenAI. It helps developers write and fix code.

There continues to be new applications of ChatGPT, as well as competing generative AI solutions that will be introduced. As their use cases evolve, there are precautions and challenges to be overcome given the nascence of the industry. Consider the following: 

Dangerous propaganda. Taken to the extreme, millions of ChatGPT bots could be programmed and deployed to appear as humans or deep fakes, having conversations designed to convince unwitting people of a particular point of view or to share misinformation.

Cybersecurity:  Given its ability to sort through massive amounts of data, generative AI has the potential to make it easier for bad actors to more easily create malware.

Replacing workers. Especially for industries, such as marketing, customer service and software development, there are serious concerns about ChatGPT’s ability to do the work of many humans. 

Copyright concerns. When someone works off of content prepared by ChatGPT, how can they be sure they are properly citing the source? According to Bern Elliott of Gartner, “the model is trained on a corpus of created works and it is still unclear what the legal precedent may be for reuse of this content, if it was derived from the intellectual property of others.”

As I explored in the CMSWire article, there still remains the issue of creativity and genuineness when it comes to generative AI. When students are using it to generate research and written content, are we creating a new generation that will have no idea how to conduct their own research, form their own opinions and apply it to a written piece of content? Will human exploration and discovery go the way of the encyclopedia or the library, or will it simply enable them to gain even more knowledge faster?

These are all concerns that will continue to evolve as ChatGPT and generative AI becomes further embedded into our lives. There is no doubt, however, that generative represents the next era in digital transformation and how we use digital tools to discover, search, create and work.  It’s going to be an interesting ride.

Getting Real About Chat GPT and Generative AI

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