Misinformation, mistakes and the Pope in a puffer: what rapidly evolving AI can – and can't – do

Generative AI – including large language models such as GPT-4, and image generators such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion – is advancing in a "storm of hype and fright", as some commentators have observed. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have yielded warnings that the rapidly developing technology may result in "ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control". That's according to an open letter signed by more than 1,000 AI experts, researchers and backers, which calls for an immediate pause on the creation of "giant" AIs for six months so that safety protocols can be developed to mitigate their dangers. But what is the technology currently capable of doing? Midjourney creates images from text descriptions.