The New ChatGPT. What is it, and Have You Tried it Yet?

ChatGPT is a new Artificial Intelligence chatbot that has taken the internet by storm.

We’ve been asking it questions, and it’s sending answers back that are strangely lifelike, chatty, humorous and, at other times, problematic. Of course, it will not answer specific questions to do with hate speech or questions that go against its programming, but asking it to answer in the voice of Snoop Dog, and all is good.

So what is it? ChatGPT is a product created by OpenAI, an organisation formed by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others in 2015. It raised $1 billion from Microsoft in 2019 and is currently valued at around $20 billion. And it can do something no search engine has been able to do before: Take in information and form coherent opinions about topics requiring nuanced thinking.

ChatGPT makes it much easier to find information instantly. With Google, you often have to sort through information to find the “right” answer, skipping over search results engineered by marketers to show up on the first page. ChatGPT does all of that for us.

Of course, we’ve had a play about with it, too, in cockney rhyming slang. I’m not sure it’s spot on, but it gave it a good go.