The Death of Blogs by ChatGPT
It is very rare that we post about something that has made the headlines but with all the press about ChatGPT, especially in the tech press, we thought we would look at the latest public contender to the field of AI. So why this post title? Well it is a little play on words, is ChatGPT going to be the death of blogs (possibly) or is this a blog written by ChatGPT (no but it is getting harder and harder to tell)?
What is ChatGPT?
Note: We wrote this blog after trying version 3 of the GPT model that was part of the free version of ChatGPT. Version 4 has been released and shows a significant step forward in functionality. For example, you can now upload images into the conversation and the AI will be able to identify and make responses based on what has been uploaded. The new model is only available to paying subscribers at the moment so some of the information below is still correct for the free version but is out of date for the paid version.
ChatGPT is a tool driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that allows you to have human-like conversations with an application. ChatGPT is not actually connected to the internet (at least for the information it bases its answers on) and therefore does not have access to the most up to date information. In fact the model that ChatGPT is currently using was finished training in early 2022. The internet was part of the material it used in training.
If you had to summarise what it is then you would probably say it was a supercharged chatbot. The GPT model it is built on is so much more than that though.
It is currently free to try, although you do have to register. If you are interested then please visit chat.openai.com (opens new window). It is very good!
Despite the hype, it is not entirely a new concept. You have probably used chatbots before, they are especially prevalent in front line customer support online. You can tell of course, especially with most of those conversations ending up with you having to chat with a real human. ChatGPT is just one of the most advanced we have seen.
Back to the title of this post, for a few years there has been AI based creative content creation solutions that can write anything from advertisements to blogs. If blogs do become redundant sources of information then it will not all be down to this one application.
Would you know if this post had been written by AI and should you care?
This blog idea came about from trying ChatGPT. The conversation went something like:
FMS Team: I need help writing a blog.
ChatGPT: Of course, I’d be happy to help…..
FMS Team: Great, can you write me a thousand-word blog on Software Development?
ChatGPT: Here is your blog…
Was it a good blog? Yes, more than good enough to publish. Could I tell AI had written it? I could tell I had not written it. I think if you visit a blog regularly then you pick up on the tone and style of an author and in that circumstance, you are probably still going to be able to tell what is and isn’t AI generated. If it was someone new though, it would be much harder to tell. AI is already capable of mimicking people with enough data points about them. Telling what is and isn’t AI generated is only going to get harder.
Should you care if something is written by AI and not a human? It is not an easy question to answer. According to this article from Reuters (opens new window) there are already 100s of books for sale on Amazon that have been written by AI, most will not list the author as ChatGPT and even less will making the developers of ChatGPT any money. So the question is “Am I happy to pay for this because it is a good book or do I not want to reward someone who didn’t actually do anything?”
Back to blog writing, if the AI is writing blogs that are full of high quality information then should it matter to human blog writers? Again, it is not straightforward. Content, like a blog, is important for companies who want to grab their potential customers attention. The search engines reward good content with higher placement in their search rankings. How far are we away from being able to integrate AI with our website, upload a list of topics (or even let the AI find the best topics to post on) and get the AI to publish a new blog everyday instead of the human doing one every 2 weeks?
If the widely used saying, “Content is King” is true today, will that still be the same when content is so effortless to produce on such a vast scale and quality. Does a website even make sense in this scenario? If the answer to your question is instant, why store it on a static page like this blog?
Our opinion is that we still have a long way to go to decide if and when we should care about how involved AI is in our lives.
Where is ChatGPT being used?
The paid version of ChatGPT was introduced in Feb 2023 so it is not being used commercially in many places. As discussed above it has been used to write books that are on sale and almost definitely has written a few thousand blog articles already!
The first to market looks likely to be Microsoft. They were early investors in the company that developed ChatGPT and the technology is being integrated with their search applications. It is coming to Bing (more here, opens new window) and will be available directly from the taskbar in Windows 11. Will it be enough to carve out a bigger share of the search market? No one is sure, Google will surely fight to maintain their dominance and they have their own AI (Bard) in development. Is it an improvement over traditional search engines? Definitely, asking a question in natural language and getting an answer back the same way feels very futuristic compared to just a list of links on a page.
Conclusion
At FMS we are always keeping our eye on the big new thing so that our customers don’t have to. In the last few years we have had Big Data, the Metaverse and now AI that is starting to live up to the hype. We are careful though to make sure our customers walk before they run, there is always something being heavily hyped up and so few make it to market. If you have a project involving AI or otherwise then contact us today.
Oh, and is the blog dead? Not yet at least so we will be back in a couple of weeks with another one.
