A free artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot and an AI portrait painter are making the rounds on social media as an entertaining way to showcase the emerging technology’s capabilities.
Key Details
- ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can provide both entertaining and useful answers to questions from users.
- Users can ask ChatGPT informational questions and receive paragraphs with information similar to Wikipedia, but they can also request that the bot perform more complex tasks like writing movie scripts.
- The bot is able to produce unique answers every time a user asks a question due to access to vast amounts of data compiled by researchers through 2021. It responds to questions using its supply of knowledge.
- Equally as popular in the last week is the AI photo-editing app called Lensa.
- The app is available on iPhone and Android and can transform user’s profile photos into cartoons or Renaissance-like paintings.
- Lensa uses tech from Stability AI—an image-generating artificial-intelligence startup.
Why it’s important
Though ChatGPT and Lensa are primarily being used for entertainment purposes on social media, they represent the cutting-edge AI technology available to the public.
Not only do they showcase AI’s abilities, but they provide an avenue for the everyday user to begin to see the applications AI may have in daily life.
AI, simply put, allows machines or computer programs to learn from previous experiences and make relevant adjustments. This technology can show up in something as simple as an online chess game or as advanced as a self-driving vehicle.
ChatGPT caught the internet’s attention as it is a free program that only requires a user to create an account. Within seconds of asking a question, the AI is able to formulate custom answers. Even if a user repeatedly asks the same question, he will receive a different response.
Users can interact with the AI in a conversation format by asking follow up questions to the original. The chat bot will also refuse to answer inappropriate questions and can admit when it makes a mistake. ChatGPT’s knowledge ends in 2021.
Already some users are seeing a practical purpose for the AI. Some users are using the chat bot to answer questions that would otherwise require hours of searching on Google.
The Lensa photo editing app has been available since 2018, but it rose to new popularity in November this year. By providing 10 to 20 source photos, Lensa can create entirely new images of the user. However, this tech comes at a price. Fifty images will cost the user $3.99.
The AI tech seems new, but experts are predicting that it will become just as common as Googling a question in a few years.
Many may view the AI chat bot and the photo editor as entertainment tools, but others worry about security and privacy. Others worry that ChatGPT could spread incorrect information.
Lensa users also had concerns about how the source photos were being stored and used. Still others have pointed out that the app tends to alter women’s features and remove racially or ethically identifying characteristics.
