More from From ChatGPT to Gemini: how AI is rewriting the internet
The rumors are true, even Notepad is getting a generative AI boost. A new update called “Explain with Copilot” will help users decipher any text, code segments, or log files they select within the text editor as Microsoft’s AI add-on enters its second year.
Microsoft announced the feature is in beta testing, available to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels.
Hugging Face tech lead Philipp Schmid posted yesterday that users can now create custom chatbots in “two clicks” using Hugging Chat Assistant. Users’ creations are then publicly available.
Schmid directly compares the feature to OpenAI’s GPTs feature, and adds they can use “any available open LLM, like Llama2 or Mixtral.”
When Microsoft started its big AI push last year, it launched Copilot tools for Sales and Service to summarize meetings, manage customer lists, and find info for customer service agents, and now they’re more widely available.
Microsoft isn’t the only one applying AI to these tasks — AWS announced a slew of generative AI services for contact centers in December, including transcriptions of audio calls and Q for Amazon Connect, which lets users ask questions about their data.
[Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog]
New York lawyer Jae Lee will face an attorney grievance panel after trusting known liar ChatGPT for case research.
The court’s order says Lee filed a “defective brief” citing a made-up case. Lee isn’t alone — others have fallen for the allure of chatbots, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and counsel representing a member of The Fugees.
The Information reports the new GenAI team will focus on developing smaller language models (SLMs) that are similar to LLMs like OpenAI’s GPT-4 but use less computing power. Microsoft spent hundreds of millions on chips for one supercomputer to run AI models, so any saving helps.
The GenAI team will be led by Microsoft corporate vice president Misha Bilenko and report to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.
Correction January 26th, 2024, 10:08AM ET: The Information has updated its earlier report, which said this will be part of the Azure cloud unit. It will in fact report to Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott.
[The Information]
Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that AI start-up Delphi cannot use OpenAI’s platform after it created Dean.Bot, a chatbot mimicking Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) for a super PAC supporting his presidential bid.
The bot ran afoul of OpenAI’s recently adopted misinformation policy that, among other things, disallows political campaigning using ChatGPT. The super PAC will reportedly try again with an open-source alternative.
[The Washington Post]
9to5Google found code within the Google Messages app that suggests it’s going to add Bard to “help you write messages, translate languages, identify images, and explore interests.” The feature, codenamed “penpal,” will reportedly put Bard in a standalone chat where you can ask it to generate ideas, identify images, and make suggestions.
Politico Pro paid subscribers will now see “thousands more Federal bill summaries” generated by AI. The new Legislative Compass feature delivers both brief and in-depth bill summaries of federal bills, which Politico says should help public policy professionals respond to legislative changes faster.
The news comes after Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer, and OpenAI announced a partnership in December. As a part of the deal, Axel Springer can build with OpenAI’s technology while ChatGPT can share content from its publications.
The company’s multisearch feature already lets you search with images and text with Lens, but these new AI insights are supposed to take things a step further by letting you ask questions about the image you’re searching for.
As an example, Google says you can take a picture of a board game and type “how do you play this?” Lens will then offer up an AI-generated answer that gives you more information about the game. This feature is rolling out this week in the US on the Google app for Android and iOS.
OpenAI’s GPT Store explicitly disallows GPTs “dedicated to fostering romantic companionship,” but a search of the store yields many custom chatbots doing just that.
First reported by Quartz, GPTs like “Virtual Sweetheart” (with 100+ chats so far), “Your Ex-Girlfriend Jessica” (200+ chats), and “Judy” (with more than 1,000 chats) are racking up a lot of users. Of course, this is nothing new. Both Replika and Character.ai encourage AI companionship through chatbots.
