Within the past few weeks, ChatGPT, a groundbreaking advancement in the field of artificial intelligence, has given unprecedented power to every Internet user. It's gained immense popularity, garnering one million users in just five days. OpenAI released this first-of-its-kind consumer-based AI product with endless abilities ranging from writing essays or writing code to building entire apps to passing professional-level tests. Chatbots have existed for decades, with ones such as Siri and Alexa acting as virtual assistants. They can execute quick searches such as "Will it rain tomorrow in Bologna?" or "What is 2 2?" ChatGPT has the unique capability to answer more abstract and open-ended questions with immense detail.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, announced several significant changes today. It also changed its terms of service to let developers opt out of using their data for improvements while adding a 30-day data retention policy. The new ChatGPT API will use the same AI model ("gpt-3.5-turbo") Snap's My AI is an early example, along with a new virtual tutor feature for the online study tool Quizlet and an upcoming Ask Instacart tool in the popular local-shopping app. However, the API won't be limited to brand-specific bots mimicking ChatGPT; it can also power "non-chat" software experiences that could benefit from AI brains. The ChatGPT API is priced at $0.002 per 1,000 tokens (about 750 words).

Generative AI's incredible speed of sinking into our everyday lives came in like a tsunami. At a record-breaking, tech-pandemic'ish growth rate, OpenAI's ChatGPT registered users reached 1 million within 5 days and 100 million within 2 months to become the fastest adopted consumer internet app. This is even more impressive considering that OpenAI's ChatGPT, while reaching 162 countries, does not allow users from mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and parts of Africa to sign up. Mainland China and Hong Kong make up a fifth of the world's population. This didn't stop the ChatGPT frenzy from reaching Chinese shores, as its wonder has topped almost every conversation, WeChat post and search results.

ChatGPT and its fellow chatbots may be much talked about (and talked to: ChatGPT may now have more than 100m users). But Mr Tossell's newsletter hints that the real action in generative AI is increasingly in all manner of less chatty services enabled by foundation models. Each model is trained on reams of text, images, sound files or any other heap of data. This allows them to interpret, react to and create statements in natural language, as well as art, music and any other type of content you find on the internet. Even as the venture-capital (VC) industry nurses a giant hangover after the recent tech crash put paid to a bubbly couple of years, entrepreneurs experimenting with generative AI have no trouble attracting investments.

It can also help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) sell smarter and more efficiently, regardless of a company's resources. In the very near future, I imagine a world in which SMBs use generative AI through Sales Cloud to streamline the sales process and close more deals faster and with fewer resources. Capabilities like automated, AI-generated proposals and customer communications, along with predictive sales modeling, will give SMBs even more powerful tools to help them provide great customer experiences, manage operating expenses, and achieve sustainable growth. Generative AI is technology built on pre-trained, large-language models that help users create unique text, images, and other content from text-based prompts. Although it has the potential to transform sales, it will face several hurdles before it can become mainstream.

As a child of the '80s, I can divide my life cleanly into Before Google and After Google. Right around the turn of the millennium, the internet stopped being a tangled thicket of incomplete lists of weird stuff and became a useful research database. Ever since, Google Search has been one of the only technological constants of my adult life, persisting through the rise of smartphones, social media, streaming services, and even drone-based burrito delivery (also, what happened to that?). In all that time, nobody has been able to challenge Google's role as gatekeeper to the cornucopia of digital abundance. More than 90 percent of internet users around the world use Google to shop, navigate, and satisfy their curiosity about pretty much everything.

Generative AI chatbots unveiled by US tech firms have captivated the world with their spectacular successes and failures in engaging in conversations. But European firms focusing more on business applications are confident they won't be left in the dust in the rapidly developing field, even as they redouble their efforts. "The launch of ChatGPT has changed everything. It has been a wake-up call for European firms," said Laurent Daudet at French startup LightOn. "But the battle for generative AI isn't over," he added.

An actual, if elderly and ailing, Havanese is looking up at me as I work, and an Avedon portrait book is open on my desk. What could be more beguiling than combining the two? Then my laptop stutters and pauses, and there it is, eerily similar to what Richard Avedon would have done if confronted with a Havanese. The stark expression, the white background, the implicit anxiety, the intellectual air, the implacable confrontational exchange with the viewer--one could quibble over details, but it is close enough to count. My Havedon is, of course, an image produced by an artificial-intelligence image generator--DALL-E 2, in this case--and the capacity of such systems to make astonishing images in short order is, by now, part of the fabric of our time, or at least our pastimes.

When ChatGPT was released late last year, people around the world suddenly awoke to the major advancements going on in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). For many, what once seemed like a science fiction fantasy was now reality. In truth, the technology behind the groundbreaking chatbot had been brewing behind the scenes in research labs and major tech companies for years. But refined and released in its most accessible form yet, ChatGPT stands to herald in a transformational age of AI adoption. ChatGPT, and other generative AIs like DALL-E, which can create original text and images from a simple prompt, won't just transform education. It will reshape the way people conduct business, create art and do research. Commentators have likened what's coming to the next Industrial Revolution: one in which the role of humans may radically change. While ChatGPT and DALL-E are both products of OpenAI, an American research company, other Silicon Valley giants have been moving quickly to show they're capable of similar technology. With names like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta and even Baidu capturing international headlines for their generative AI offerings, it's easy to forget that the foundational principles upon which these technologies rest were developed in large part by Canadian scientists.

Perhaps without realising it, recruiters are already using AI and enjoying the benefits of it. Take LinkedIn for example, where its recruiter-facing product will automatically suggest top candidates based on keywords or other parameters we feed it. There are countless examples of AI doing background work for busy talent acquisition professionals, letting them focus on what is important. The reason that we are seeing more conversations around ChatGPT and generative AI specifically is because of how in-your-face it is. Perhaps ignorance has been bliss in the past?