For the second time since its launch, ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm. 

The artificial intelligence chatbot that dominated the tech space for the past few months is back taking up headlines yet again. 

This time, the ranting and raving is all about its latest update. 

Earlier in the week, the OpenAI Foundation released ChatGPT-4.

The story started last year, when ChatGPT-3 captured everyone’s imagination with its ability to understand human language inputs and provide human-like responses. 

This week, we’re seeing that ChatGPT-4 is a more powerful and refined version of OpenAI’s technology. 

The new version is trained on a larger amount of data, and the data are of higher quality, meaning it can “understand” and respond to human questions more intelligently. 

ChatGPT-4 is also what’s called a multimodal artificial intelligence, meaning it can do more than one thing. 

It doesn’t just chat and respond in natural language to text-based questions, it can also create images and audio based on user queries. 

Under the hood, ChatGPT-4’s algorithms have been optimized to be more computationally efficient, which is a big deal, since an AI query is incredibly expensive in terms of computer cycles.

As you know, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has been a huge investor in OpenAI and owns the license to use the technology in its own products. 

The company is already using ChatGPT-4 in a limited way on its Bing search engine, but right now you still have to join a waitlist. 

Excitement over AI plans has shares Microsoft and other AI-adjacent plays breaking out this week.

And as I’ve mentioned before, AI is incredibly computationally expensive. 

That means that AI companies need a lot of expensive hardware to be able to crunch through user queries and provide human-like responses. 

Given this, hardware and software companies alike are enjoying some nice gains right now as the internet is impressed once again by just how powerful AI platforms can be. 

AI Infusion Into Daily Life

One of the big ways that many people have been using platforms like ChatGPT is to assist with writing projects. 

Whether you are in the publishing business trying to optimize your day-to-day or in high school trying to write essays faster, ChatGPT can help. 

Microsoft is taking things a step further by infusing its popular workplace software with the technology behind ChatGPT. 

Thanks to its exclusive rights to the chatbot, Microsoft will be upgrading PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook with new abilities.

One of the main features that will be added is called Microsoft 365 Copilot. 

It will be embedded inside the Microsoft 365 suite and will allow users to generate documents, presentations, and original text through natural-language inputs.

It could be like having your own personal editor living inside your document, suggesting intelligent edits and more to help you improve whatever you’re working on.

And this is just the latest step that Microsoft has taken to integrate AI into people’s daily lives… 

Just last month, Microsoft rolled out a new version of its search engine Bing that used generative AI to give direct answers to questions and had a sophisticated chat tool.

Sure enough, it’s clear to see that AI will continue working its way into society more and more as the months and years go by. 

Microsoft aside, many other companies are also integrating AI into their programs and services to boost efficiency and develop a more robust customer experience. 

I don’t think it will be long before we’re all using AI in some form or another. 

Even if you don’t personally use AI in the way of a chatbot or a similar platform, it’s very likely you use or interact with something that employs AI functionality behind the scenes. 

Of course, the technology is still far from perfect. Even after over a decade of development, AI in general is still in its infancy. 

Humans still need to vet the accuracy of the content that any of these AI tools churn out, and we will likely need to continue doing so for some time. 

But that’s not to say that these tools aren’t massively helpful to most users. It’s better not to look at AI platforms as a way to replace conventional work but as a way to enhance the way you do things. 

Just like any tool, it’s only as good as the person using it. Maybe there will be a day when AI is good enough to entirely replace most complex tasks, but it still requires a lot of hand-holding in the meantime

Now, before I go, I’d love to hear back from you about today’s topic. Do you use AI platforms like ChatGPT right now? If so, what do you use them for? If not, why? Drop me a line and let me know here: feedback@technologyprofits.com.