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openai-and-common-sense-media-partner-to-protect-teens-from-ai-harms-and-misuse

OpenAI and Common Sense Media partner to protect teens from AI harms and misuse

AI, AI ethics, AI reviews, AI safety, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Common Sense Media, large language models, machine learning, openai, sam altman, text synthesis / /

Adventures in chatbusting —

Site gave ChatGPT 3 stars and 48% privacy score: “Best used for creativity, not facts.”

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Boy in Living Room Wearing Robot Mask

On Monday, OpenAI announced a partnership with the nonprofit Common Sense Media to create AI guidelines and educational materials targeted at parents, educators, and teens. It includes the curation of family-friendly GPTs in OpenAI’s GPT store. The collaboration aims to address concerns about the impacts of AI on children and teenagers.

Known for its reviews of films and TV shows aimed at parents seeking appropriate media for their kids to watch, Common Sense Media recently branched out into AI and has been reviewing AI assistants on its site.

“AI isn’t going anywhere, so it’s important that we help kids understand how to use it responsibly,” Common Sense Media wrote on X. “That’s why we’ve partnered with @OpenAI to help teens and families safely harness the potential of AI.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer announced the partnership onstage in San Francisco at the Common Sense Summit for America’s Kids and Families, an event that was well-covered by media members on the social media site X.

For his part, Altman offered a canned statement in the press release, saying, “AI offers incredible benefits for families and teens, and our partnership with Common Sense will further strengthen our safety work, ensuring that families and teens can use our tools with confidence.”

The announcement feels slightly non-specific in the official news release, with Steyer offering, “Our guides and curation will be designed to educate families and educators about safe, responsible use of ChatGPT, so that we can collectively avoid any unintended consequences of this emerging technology.”

The partnership seems aimed mostly at bringing a patina of family-friendliness to OpenAI’s GPT store, with the most solid reveal being the aforementioned fact that Common Sense media will help with the “curation of family-friendly GPTs in the GPT Store based on Common Sense ratings and standards.”

Common Sense AI reviews

As mentioned above, Common Sense Media began reviewing AI assistants on its site late last year. This puts Common Sense Media in an interesting position with potential conflicts of interest regarding the new partnership with OpenAI. However, it doesn’t seem to be offering any favoritism to OpenAI so far.

For example, Common Sense Media’s review of ChatGPT calls the AI assistant “A powerful, at times risky chatbot for people 13+ that is best used for creativity, not facts.” It labels ChatGPT as being suitable for ages 13 and up (which is in OpenAI’s Terms of Service) and gives the OpenAI assistant three out of five stars. ChatGPT also scores a 48 percent privacy rating (which is oddly shown as 55 percent on another page that goes into privacy details). The review we cited was last updated on October 13, 2023, as of this writing.

For reference, Google Bard gets a three-star overall rating and a 75 percent privacy rating in its Common Sense Media review. Stable Diffusion, the image synthesis model, nets a one-star rating with the description, “Powerful image generator can unleash creativity, but is wildly unsafe and perpetuates harm.” OpenAI’s DALL-E gets two stars and a 48 percent privacy rating.

The information that Common Sense Media includes about each AI model appears relatively accurate and detailed (and the organization cited an Ars Technica article as a reference in one explanation), so they feel fair, even in the face of the OpenAI partnership. Given the low scores, it seems that most AI models aren’t off to a great start, but that may change. It’s still early days in generative AI.

OpenAI and Common Sense Media partner to protect teens from AI harms and misuse Read More »

openai-updates-chatgpt-4-model-with-potential-fix-for-ai-“laziness”-problem

OpenAI updates ChatGPT-4 model with potential fix for AI “laziness” problem

AI, AI assitants, AI laziness, Biz & IT, chatgpt, ChatGPT-4, chatgtp, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, gpt-3.5-turbo, GPT-4, GPT-4-turbo, large language models, openai / /

Break’s over —

Also, new GPT-3.5 Turbo model, lower API prices, and other model updates.

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A lazy robot (a man with a box on his head) sits on the floor beside a couch.

On Thursday, OpenAI announced updates to the AI models that power its ChatGPT assistant. Amid less noteworthy updates, OpenAI tucked in a mention of a potential fix to a widely reported “laziness” problem seen in GPT-4 Turbo since its release in November. The company also announced a new GPT-3.5 Turbo model (with lower pricing), a new embedding model, an updated moderation model, and a new way to manage API usage.

“Today, we are releasing an updated GPT-4 Turbo preview model, gpt-4-0125-preview. This model completes tasks like code generation more thoroughly than the previous preview model and is intended to reduce cases of ‘laziness’ where the model doesn’t complete a task,” writes OpenAI in its blog post.

Since the launch of GPT-4 Turbo, a large number of ChatGPT users have reported that the ChatGPT-4 version of its AI assistant has been declining to do tasks (especially coding tasks) with the same exhaustive depth as it did in earlier versions of GPT-4. We’ve seen this behavior ourselves while experimenting with ChatGPT over time.

OpenAI has never offered an official explanation for this change in behavior, but OpenAI employees have previously acknowledged on social media that the problem is real, and the ChatGPT X account wrote in December, “We’ve heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier! we haven’t updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn’t intentional. model behavior can be unpredictable, and we’re looking into fixing it.”

We reached out to OpenAI asking if it could provide an official explanation for the laziness issue but did not receive a response by press time.

New GPT-3.5 Turbo, other updates

Elsewhere in OpenAI’s blog update, the company announced a new version of GPT-3.5 Turbo (gpt-3.5-turbo-0125), which it says will offer “various improvements including higher accuracy at responding in requested formats and a fix for a bug which caused a text encoding issue for non-English language function calls.”

And the cost of GPT-3.5 Turbo through OpenAI’s API will decrease for the third time this year “to help our customers scale.” New input token prices are 50 percent less, at $0.0005 per 1,000 input tokens, and output prices are 25 percent less, at $0.0015 per 1,000 output tokens.

Lower token prices for GPT-3.5 Turbo will make operating third-party bots significantly less expensive, but the GPT-3.5 model is generally more likely to confabulate than GPT-4 Turbo. So we might see more scenarios like Quora’s bot telling people that eggs can melt (although the instance used a now-deprecated GPT-3 model called text-davinci-003). If GPT-4 Turbo API prices drop over time, some of those hallucination issues with third parties might eventually go away.

OpenAI also announced new embedding models, text-embedding-3-small and text-embedding-3-large, which convert content into numerical sequences, aiding in machine learning tasks like clustering and retrieval. And an updated moderation model, text-moderation-007, is part of the company’s API that “allows developers to identify potentially harmful text,” according to OpenAI.

Finally, OpenAI is rolling out improvements to its developer platform, introducing new tools for managing API keys and a new dashboard for tracking API usage. Developers can now assign permissions to API keys from the API keys page, helping to clamp down on misuse of API keys (if they get into the wrong hands) that can potentially cost developers lots of money. The API dashboard allows devs to “view usage on a per feature, team, product, or project level, simply by having separate API keys for each.”

As the media world seemingly swirls around the company with controversies and think pieces about the implications of its tech, releases like these show that the dev teams at OpenAI are still rolling along as usual with updates at a fairly regular pace. Despite the company almost completely falling apart late last year, it seems that, under the hood, it’s business as usual for OpenAI.

OpenAI updates ChatGPT-4 model with potential fix for AI “laziness” problem Read More »

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OpenAI opens the door for military uses but maintains AI weapons ban

AI, AI ethics, AI safety, AI weapons, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Cybersecurity, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, Military, openai, Pentagon, suicide prevention, US Defense Department / /

Skynet deferred —

Despite new Pentagon collab, OpenAI won’t allow customers to “develop or use weapons” with its tools.

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The OpenAI logo over a camoflage background.

On Tuesday, ChatGPT developer OpenAI revealed that it is collaborating with the United States Defense Department on cybersecurity projects and exploring ways to prevent veteran suicide, reports Bloomberg. OpenAI revealed the collaboration during an interview with the news outlet at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The AI company recently modified its policies, allowing for certain military applications of its technology, while maintaining prohibitions against using it to develop weapons.

According to Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, “many people thought that [a previous blanket prohibition on military applications] would prohibit many of these use cases, which people think are very much aligned with what we want to see in the world.” OpenAI removed terms from its service agreement that previously blocked AI use in “military and warfare” situations, but the company still upholds a ban on its technology being used to develop weapons or to cause harm or property damage.

Under the “Universal Policies” section of OpenAI’s Usage Policies document, section 2 says, “Don’t use our service to harm yourself or others.” The prohibition includes using its AI products to “develop or use weapons.” Changes to the terms that removed the “military and warfare” prohibitions appear to have been made by OpenAI on January 10.

The shift in policy appears to align OpenAI more closely with the needs of various governmental departments, including the possibility of preventing veteran suicides. “We’ve been doing work with the Department of Defense on cybersecurity tools for open-source software that secures critical infrastructure,” Makanju said in the interview. “We’ve been exploring whether it can assist with (prevention of) veteran suicide.”

The efforts mark a significant change from OpenAI’s original stance on military partnerships, Bloomberg says. Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp., a large investor in OpenAI, already has an established relationship with the US military through various software contracts.

OpenAI opens the door for military uses but maintains AI weapons ban Read More »

openai-must-defend-chatgpt-fabrications-after-failing-to-defeat-libel-suit

OpenAI must defend ChatGPT fabrications after failing to defeat libel suit

ai hallucinations, chatbot, chatgpt, chatgpt fabrications, chatgpt hallucinations, defamation, generative ai, hallucinations, libel, libel law, openai, Policy / /

One false move —

ChatGPT users may soon learn whether false outputs will be allowed to ruin lives.

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OpenAI must defend ChatGPT fabrications after failing to defeat libel suit

OpenAI may finally have to answer for ChatGPT’s “hallucinations” in court after a Georgia judge recently ruled against the tech company’s motion to dismiss a radio host’s defamation suit.

OpenAI had argued that ChatGPT’s output cannot be considered libel, partly because the chatbot output cannot be considered a “publication,” which is a key element of a defamation claim. In its motion to dismiss, OpenAI also argued that Georgia radio host Mark Walters could not prove that the company acted with actual malice or that anyone believed the allegedly libelous statements were true or that he was harmed by the alleged publication.

It’s too early to say whether Judge Tracie Cason found OpenAI’s arguments persuasive. In her order denying OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, which MediaPost shared here, Cason did not specify how she arrived at her decision, saying only that she had “carefully” considered arguments and applicable laws.

There may be some clues as to how Cason reached her decision in a court filing from John Monroe, attorney for Walters, when opposing the motion to dismiss last year.

Monroe had argued that OpenAI improperly moved to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing facts that have yet to be proven in court. If OpenAI intended the court to rule on those arguments, Monroe suggested that a motion for summary judgment would have been the proper step at this stage in the proceedings, not a motion to dismiss.

Had OpenAI gone that route, though, Walters would have had an opportunity to present additional evidence. To survive a motion to dismiss, all Walters had to do was show that his complaint was reasonably supported by facts, Monroe argued.

Failing to convince the court that Walters had no case, OpenAI’s legal theories regarding its liability for ChatGPT’s “hallucinations” will now likely face their first test in court.

“We are pleased the court denied the motion to dismiss so that the parties will have an opportunity to explore, and obtain a decision on, the merits of the case,” Monroe told Ars.

What’s the libel case against OpenAI?

Walters sued OpenAI after a journalist, Fred Riehl, warned him that in response to a query, ChatGPT had fabricated an entire lawsuit. Generating an entire complaint with an erroneous case number, ChatGPT falsely claimed that Walters had been accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation.

Walters is the host of Armed America Radio and has a reputation as the “Loudest Voice in America Fighting For Gun Rights.” He claimed that OpenAI “recklessly” disregarded whether ChatGPT’s outputs were false, alleging that OpenAI knew that “ChatGPT’s hallucinations were pervasive and severe” and did not work to prevent allegedly libelous outputs. As Walters saw it, the false statements were serious enough to be potentially career-damaging, “tending to injure Walter’s reputation and exposing him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.”

Monroe argued that Walters had “adequately stated a claim” of libel, per se, as a private citizen, “for which relief may be granted under Georgia law” where “malice is inferred” in “all actions for defamation” but “may be rebutted” by OpenAI.

Pushing back, OpenAI argued that Walters was a public figure who must prove that OpenAI acted with “actual malice” when allowing ChatGPT to produce allegedly harmful outputs. But Monroe told the court that OpenAI “has not shown sufficient facts to establish that Walters is a general public figure.”

Whether or not Walters is a public figure could be another key question leading Cason to rule against OpenAI’s motion to dismiss.

Perhaps also frustrating the court, OpenAI introduced “a large amount of material” in its motion to dismiss that fell outside the scope of the complaint, Monroe argued. That included pointing to a disclaimer in ChatGPT’s terms of use that warns users that ChatGPT’s responses may not be accurate and should be verified before publishing. According to OpenAI, this disclaimer makes Riehl the “owner” of any libelous ChatGPT responses to his queries.

“A disclaimer does not make an otherwise libelous statement non-libelous,” Monroe argued. And even if the disclaimer made Riehl liable for publishing the ChatGPT output—an argument that may give some ChatGPT users pause before querying—”that responsibility does not have the effect of negating the responsibility of the original publisher of the material,” Monroe argued.

Additionally, OpenAI referenced a conversation between Walters and OpenAI, even though Monroe said that the complaint “does not allege that Walters ever had a chat” with OpenAI. And OpenAI also somewhat oddly argued that ChatGPT outputs could be considered “intra-corporate communications” rather than publications, suggesting that ChatGPT users could be considered private contractors when querying the chatbot.

With the lawsuit moving forward, curious chatbot users everywhere may finally get the answer to a question that has been unclear since ChatGPT quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application of all time after its launch in November 2022: Will ChatGPT’s hallucinations be allowed to ruin lives?

In the meantime, the FTC is seemingly still investigating potential harms caused by ChatGPT’s “false, misleading, or disparaging” generations.

An FTC spokesperson previously told Ars that the FTC does not generally comment on nonpublic investigations.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

OpenAI must defend ChatGPT fabrications after failing to defeat libel suit Read More »

as-2024-election-looms,-openai-says-it-is-taking-steps-to-prevent-ai-abuse

As 2024 election looms, OpenAI says it is taking steps to prevent AI abuse

2024, 2024 election, AI, AI abuse, AI ethics, AI safety, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, dall-e, DALL-E 3, Deepfakes, image synthesis, large language models, machine learning, openai, text synthesis, US presidential election / /

Don’t Rock the vote —

ChatGPT maker plans transparency for gen AI content and improved access to voting info.

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A pixelated photo of Donald Trump.

On Monday, ChatGPT maker OpenAI detailed its plans to prevent the misuse of its AI technologies during the upcoming elections in 2024, promising transparency in AI-generated content and enhancing access to reliable voting information. The AI developer says it is working on an approach that involves policy enforcement, collaboration with partners, and the development of new tools aimed at classifying AI-generated media.

“As we prepare for elections in 2024 across the world’s largest democracies, our approach is to continue our platform safety work by elevating accurate voting information, enforcing measured policies, and improving transparency,” writes OpenAI in its blog post. “Protecting the integrity of elections requires collaboration from every corner of the democratic process, and we want to make sure our technology is not used in a way that could undermine this process.”

Initiatives proposed by OpenAI include preventing abuse by means such as deepfakes or bots imitating candidates, refining usage policies, and launching a reporting system for the public to flag potential abuses. For example, OpenAI’s image generation tool, DALL-E 3, includes built-in filters that reject requests to create images of real people, including politicians. “For years, we’ve been iterating on tools to improve factual accuracy, reduce bias, and decline certain requests,” the company stated.

OpenAI says it regularly updates its Usage Policies for ChatGPT and its API products to prevent misuse, especially in the context of elections. The organization has implemented restrictions on using its technologies for political campaigning and lobbying until it better understands the potential for personalized persuasion. Also, OpenAI prohibits creating chatbots that impersonate real individuals or institutions and disallows the development of applications that could deter people from “participation in democratic processes.” Users can report GPTs that may violate the rules.

OpenAI claims to be proactively engaged in detailed strategies to safeguard its technologies against misuse. According to their statements, this includes red-teaming new systems to anticipate challenges, engaging with users and partners for feedback, and implementing robust safety mitigations. OpenAI asserts that these efforts are integral to its mission of continually refining AI tools for improved accuracy, reduced biases, and responsible handling of sensitive requests

Regarding transparency, OpenAI says it is advancing its efforts in classifying image provenance. The company plans to embed digital credentials, using cryptographic techniques, into images produced by DALL-E 3 as part of its adoption of standards by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. Additionally, OpenAI says it is testing a tool designed to identify DALL-E-generated images.

In an effort to connect users with authoritative information, particularly concerning voting procedures, OpenAI says it has partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) in the United States. ChatGPT will direct users to CanIVote.org for verified US voting information.

“We want to make sure that our AI systems are built, deployed, and used safely,” writes OpenAI. “Like any new technology, these tools come with benefits and challenges. They are also unprecedented, and we will keep evolving our approach as we learn more about how our tools are used.”

As 2024 election looms, OpenAI says it is taking steps to prevent AI abuse Read More »

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Lazy use of AI leads to Amazon products called “I cannot fulfill that request”

AI, Amazon, openai, spam / /

FILE NOT FOUND —

The telltale error messages are a sign of AI-generated pablum all over the Internet.

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I know naming new products can be hard, but these Amazon sellers made some particularly odd naming choices.

Enlarge / I know naming new products can be hard, but these Amazon sellers made some particularly odd naming choices.

Amazon

Amazon users are at this point used to search results filled with products that are fraudulent, scams, or quite literally garbage. These days, though, they also may have to pick through obviously shady products, with names like “I’m sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy.”

As of press time, some version of that telltale OpenAI error message appears in Amazon products ranging from lawn chairs to office furniture to Chinese religious tracts. A few similarly named products that were available as of this morning have been taken down as word of the listings spreads across social media (one such example is Archived here).

ProTip: Don't ask OpenAI to integrate a trademarked brand name when generating a name for your weird length of rubber tubing.

Enlarge / ProTip: Don’t ask OpenAI to integrate a trademarked brand name when generating a name for your weird length of rubber tubing.

Other Amazon product names don’t mention OpenAI specifically but feature apparent AI-related error messages, such as “Sorry but I can’t generate a response to that request” or “Sorry but I can’t provide the information you’re looking for,” (available in a variety of colors). Sometimes, the product names even highlight the specific reason why the apparent AI-generation request failed, noting that OpenAI can’t provide content that “requires using trademarked brand names” or “promotes a specific religious institution” or in one case “encourage unethical behavior.”

The repeated invocation of a

Enlarge / The repeated invocation of a “commitment to providing reliable and trustworthy product descriptions” cited in this description is particularly ironic.

The descriptions for these oddly named products are also riddled with obvious AI error messages like, “Apologies, but I am unable to provide the information you’re seeking.” One product description for a set of tables and chairs (which has since been taken down) hilariously noted: “Our [product] can be used for a variety of tasks, such [task 1], [task 2], and [task 3]].” Another set of product descriptions, seemingly for tattoo ink guns, repeatedly apologizes that it can’t provide more information because: “We prioritize accuracy and reliability by only offering verified product details to our customers.”

Spam spam spam spam

Using large language models to help generate product names or descriptions isn’t against Amazon policy. On the contrary, in September Amazon launched its own generative AI tool to help sellers “create more thorough and captivating product descriptions, titles, and listing details.” And we could only find a small handful of Amazon products slipping through with the telltale error messages in their names or descriptions as of press time.

Still, these error-message-filled listings highlight the lack of care or even basic editing many Amazon scammers are exercising when putting their spammy product listings on the Amazon marketplace. For every seller that can be easily caught accidentally posting an OpenAI error, there are likely countless others using the technology to create product names and descriptions that only seem like they were written by a human that has actual experience with the product in question.

A set of clearly real people conversing on Twitter / X.

Enlarge / A set of clearly real people conversing on Twitter / X.

Amazon isn’t the only online platform where these AI bots are outing themselves, either. A quick search for “goes against OpenAI policy” or “as an AI language model” can find a whole lot of artificial posts on Twitter / X or Threads or LinkedIn, for example. Security engineer Dan Feldman noted a similar problem on Amazon back in April, though searching with the phrase “as an AI language model” doesn’t seem to generate any obviously AI-generated search results these days.

As fun as it is to call out these obvious mishaps for AI-generated content mills, a flood of harder-to-detect AI content is threatening to overwhelm everyone from art communities to sci-fi magazines to Amazon’s own ebook marketplace. Pretty much any platform that accepts user submissions that involve text or visual art now has to worry about being flooded with wave after wave of AI-generated work trying to crowd out the human community they were created for. It’s a problem that’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

Listing image by Getty Images | Leon Neal

Lazy use of AI leads to Amazon products called “I cannot fulfill that request” Read More »

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At Senate AI hearing, news executives fight against “fair use” claims for AI training data

AI, AI regulation, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Conde Nast, Curtis LeGeyt, Danielle Coffey, government, Jeff Jarvis, Josh Hawley, machine learning, openai, Richard Blumenthal, Roger Lynch, Section 230, Senate Judiciary Committee, US government, US Senate / /

All’s fair in love and AI —

Media orgs want AI firms to license content for training, and Congress is sympathetic.

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WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 10: Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of News Media Alliance, Professor Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Curtis LeGeyt President and CEO of National Association of Broadcasters, Roger Lynch CEO of Condé Nast, are strong in during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism” at the U.S. Capitol on January 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. Lawmakers continue to hear testimony from experts and business leaders about artificial intelligence and its impact on democracy, elections, privacy, liability and news. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Enlarge / Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of News Media Alliance; Professor Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of National Association of Broadcasters; and Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, are sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.”

Getty Images

On Wednesday, news industry executives urged Congress for legal clarification that using journalism to train AI assistants like ChatGPT is not fair use, as claimed by companies such as OpenAI. Instead, they would prefer a licensing regime for AI training content that would force Big Tech companies to pay for content in a method similar to rights clearinghouses for music.

The plea for action came during a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Oversight of A.I.: The Future of Journalism,” chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri also playing a large role in the proceedings. Last year, the pair of senators introduced a bipartisan framework for AI legislation and held a series of hearings on the impact of AI.

Blumenthal described the situation as an “existential crisis” for the news industry and cited social media as a cautionary tale for legislative inaction about AI. “We need to move more quickly than we did on social media and learn from our mistakes in the delay there,” he said.

Companies like OpenAI have admitted that vast amounts of copyrighted material are necessary to train AI large language models, but they claim their use is transformational and covered under fair use precedents of US copyright law. Currently, OpenAI is negotiating licensing content from some news providers and striking deals, but the executives in the hearing said those efforts are not enough, highlighting closing newsrooms across the US and dropping media revenues while Big Tech’s profits soar.

“Gen AI cannot replace journalism,” said Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch in his opening statement. (Condé Nast is the parent company of Ars Technica.) “Journalism is fundamentally a human pursuit, and it plays an essential and irreplaceable role in our society and our democracy.” Lynch said that generative AI has been built with “stolen goods,” referring to the use of AI training content from news outlets without authorization. “Gen AI companies copy and display our content without permission or compensation in order to build massive commercial businesses that directly compete with us.”

Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law during a hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.”

Enlarge / Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law during a hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.”

Getty Images

In addition to Lynch, the hearing featured three other witnesses: Jeff Jarvis, a veteran journalism professor and pundit; Danielle Coffey, the president and CEO of News Media Alliance; and Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Coffey also shared concerns about generative AI using news material to create competitive products. “These outputs compete in the same market, with the same audience, and serve the same purpose as the original articles that feed the algorithms in the first place,” she said.

When Sen. Hawley asked Lynch what kind of legislation might be needed to fix the problem, Lynch replied, “I think quite simply, if Congress could clarify that the use of our content and other publisher content for training and output of AI models is not fair use, then the free market will take care of the rest.”

Lynch used the music industry as a model: “You think about millions of artists, millions of ultimate consumers consuming that content, there have been models that have been set up, ASCAP, BMI, CSAC, GMR, these collective rights organizations to simplify the content that’s being used.”

Curtis LeGeyt, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, said that TV broadcast journalists are also affected by generative AI. “The use of broadcasters’ news content in AI models without authorization diminishes our audience’s trust and our reinvestment in local news,” he said. “Broadcasters have already seen numerous examples where content created by our journalists has been ingested and regurgitated by AI bots with little or no attribution.”

At Senate AI hearing, news executives fight against “fair use” claims for AI training data Read More »

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OpenAI’s GPT Store lets ChatGPT users discover popular user-made chatbot roles

AI, AI language models, AI models, App Store, Biz & IT, chatgpt, ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team, chatgtp, GPT Store, GPTs, large language models, machine learning, openai, text synthesis / /

The bot of 1,000 faces —

Like an app store, people can find novel ChatGPT personalities—and some creators will get paid.

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Two robots hold a gift box.

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced the launch of its GPT Store—a way for ChatGPT users to share and discover custom chatbot roles called “GPTs”—and ChatGPT Team, a collaborative ChatGPT workspace and subscription plan. OpenAI bills the new store as a way to “help you find useful and popular custom versions of ChatGPT” for members of Plus, Team, or Enterprise subscriptions.

“It’s been two months since we announced GPTs, and users have already created over 3 million custom versions of ChatGPT,” writes OpenAI in its promotional blog. “Many builders have shared their GPTs for others to use. Today, we’re starting to roll out the GPT Store to ChatGPT Plus, Team and Enterprise users so you can find useful and popular GPTs.”

OpenAI launched GPTs on November 6, 2023, as part of its DevDay event. Each GPT includes custom instructions and/or access to custom data or external APIs that can potentially make a custom GPT personality more useful than the vanilla ChatGPT-4 model. Before the GPT Store launch, paying ChatGPT users could create and share custom GPTs with others (by setting the GPT public and sharing a link to the GPT), but there was no central repository for browsing and discovering user-designed GPTs on the OpenAI website.

According to OpenAI, the ChatGPT Store will feature new GPTs every week, and the company shared a list a group of six notable early GPTs that are available now: AllTrails for finding hiking trails, Consensus for searching 200 million academic papers, Code Tutor for learning coding with Khan Academy, Canva for designing presentations, Books for discovering reading material, and CK-12 Flexi for learning math and science.

A screenshot of the OpenAI GPT Store provided by OpenAI.

Enlarge / A screenshot of the OpenAI GPT Store provided by OpenAI.

OpenAI

ChatGPT members can include their own GPTs in the GPT Store by setting them to be accessible to “Everyone” and then verifying a builder profile in ChatGPT settings. OpenAI plans to review GPTs to ensure they meet their policies and brand guidelines. GPTs that violate the rules can also be reported by users.

As promised by CEO Sam Altman during DevDay, OpenAI plans to share revenue with GPT creators. Unlike a smartphone app store, it appears that users will not sell their GPTs in the GPT Store, but instead, OpenAI will pay developers “based on user engagement with their GPTs.” The revenue program will launch in the first quarter of 2024, and OpenAI will provide more details on the criteria for receiving payments later.

“ChatGPT Team” is for teams who use ChatGPT

Also on Monday, OpenAI announced the cleverly named ChatGPT Team, a new group-based ChatGPT membership program akin to ChatGPT Enterprise, which the company launched last August. Unlike Enterprise, which is for large companies and does not have publicly listed prices, ChatGPT Team is a plan for “teams of all sizes” and costs US $25 a month per user (when billed annually) or US $30 a month per user (when billed monthly). By comparison, ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month.

So what does ChatGPT Team offer above the usual ChatGPT Plus subscription? According to OpenAI, it “provides a secure, collaborative workspace to get the most out of ChatGPT at work.” Unlike Plus, OpenAI says it will not train AI models based on ChatGPT Team business data or conversations. It features an admin console for team management and the ability to share custom GPTs with your team. Like Plus, it also includes access to GPT-4 with the 32K context window, DALL-E 3, GPT-4 with Vision, Browsing, and Advanced Data Analysis—all with higher message caps.

Why would you want to use ChatGPT at work? OpenAI says it can help you generate better code, craft emails, analyze data, and more. Your mileage may vary, of course. As usual, our standard Ars warning about AI language models applies: “Bring your own data” for analysis, don’t rely on ChatGPT as a factual resource, and don’t rely on its outputs in ways you cannot personally confirm. OpenAI has provided more details about ChatGPT Team on its website.

OpenAI’s GPT Store lets ChatGPT users discover popular user-made chatbot roles Read More »

regulators-aren’t-convinced-that-microsoft-and-openai-operate-independently

Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently

AI, anticompetitive behavior, Antitrust law, competition, competition and markets authority, European Commission, generative ai, microsoft, monopoly, openai, Policy, virtual worlds / /

Under Microsoft’s thumb? —

EU is fielding comments on potential market harms of Microsoft’s investments.

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Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently

European Union regulators are concerned that Microsoft may be covertly controlling OpenAI as its biggest investor.

On Tuesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that it is currently “checking whether Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI might be reviewable under the EU Merger Regulation.”

The EC’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said in the announcement that rapidly advancing AI technologies are “disruptive” and have “great potential,” but to protect EU markets, a forward-looking analysis scrutinizing antitrust risks has become necessary.

Hoping to thwart predictable anticompetitive risks, the EC has called for public comments. Regulators are particularly keen to hear from policy experts, academics, and industry and consumer organizations who can identify “potential competition issues” stemming from tech companies partnering to develop generative AI and virtual world/metaverse systems.

The EC worries that partnerships like Microsoft and OpenAI could “result in entrenched market positions and potential harmful competition behavior that is difficult to address afterwards.” That’s why Vestager said that these partnerships needed to be “closely” monitored now—”to ensure they do not unduly distort market dynamics.”

Microsoft has denied having control over OpenAI.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Ars that, rather than stifling competition, since 2019, the tech giant has “forged a partnership with OpenAI that has fostered more AI innovation and competition, while preserving independence for both companies.”

But ever since Sam Altman was bizarrely ousted by OpenAI’s board, then quickly reappointed as OpenAI’s CEO—joining Microsoft for the brief time in between—regulators have begun questioning whether recent governance changes mean that Microsoft’s got more control over OpenAI than the companies have publicly stated.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment. Last year, OpenAI confirmed that “it remained independent and operates competitively,” CNBC reported.

Beyond the EU, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and reportedly the US Federal Trade Commission have also launched investigations into Microsoft’s OpenAI investments. On January 3, the CMA ended its comments period, but it’s currently unclear whether significant competition issues were raised that could trigger a full-fledged CMA probe.

A CMA spokesperson declined Ars’ request to comment on the substance of comments received or to verify how many comments were received.

Antitrust legal experts told Reuters that authorities should act quickly to prevent “critical emerging technology” like generative AI from being “monopolized,” noting that before launching a probe, the CMA will need to find evidence showing that Microsoft’s influence over OpenAI materially changed after Altman’s reappointment.

The EC is also investigating partnerships beyond Microsoft and OpenAI, questioning whether agreements “between large digital market players and generative AI developers and providers” may impact EU market dynamics.

Microsoft observing OpenAI board meetings

In total, Microsoft has pumped $13 billion into OpenAI, CNBC reported, which has a somewhat opaque corporate structure. OpenAI’s parent company, Reuters reported in December, is a nonprofit, which is “a type of entity rarely subject to antitrust scrutiny.” But in 2019, as Microsoft started investing billions into the AI company, OpenAI also “set up a for-profit subsidiary, in which Microsoft owns a 49 percent stake,” an insider source told Reuters. On Tuesday, a nonprofit consumer rights group, the Public Citizen, called for California Attorney General Robert Bonta to “investigate whether OpenAI should retain its non-profit status.”

A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters that the source’s information was inaccurate, reiterating that the terms of Microsoft’s agreement with OpenAI are confidential. Microsoft has maintained that while it is entitled to OpenAI’s profits, it does not own “any portion” of OpenAI.

After OpenAI’s drama with Altman ended with an overhaul of OpenAI’s board, Microsoft appeared to increase its involvement with OpenAI by receiving a non-voting observer role on the board. That’s what likely triggered lawmaker’s initial concerns that Microsoft “may be exerting control over OpenAI,” CNBC reported.

The EC’s announcement comes days after Microsoft confirmed that Dee Templeton would serve as the observer on OpenAI’s board, initially reported by Bloomberg.

Templeton has spent 25 years working for Microsoft and is currently vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations. According to Bloomberg, she has already attended OpenAI board meetings.

Microsoft’s spokesperson told Ars that adding a board observer was the only recent change in the company’s involvement in OpenAI. An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that Microsoft’s board observer has no “governing authority or control over OpenAI’s operations.”

By appointing Templeton as a board observer, Microsoft may simply be seeking to avoid any further surprises that could affect its investment in OpenAI, but the CMA has suggested that Microsoft’s involvement in the board may have created “a relevant merger situation” that could shake up competition in the UK if not appropriately regulated.

Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently Read More »

microsoft-is-adding-a-new-key-to-pc-keyboards-for-the-first-time-since-1994

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994

copilot, microsoft, openai, Tech, Windows 10, Windows 11 / /

key change —

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

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A rendering of Microsoft's Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Enlarge / A rendering of Microsoft’s Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Microsoft

Microsoft pushed throughout 2023 to add generative AI capabilities to its software, even extending its new Copilot AI assistant to Windows 10 late last year. Now, those efforts to transform PCs at a software level is extending to the hardware: Microsoft is adding a dedicated Copilot key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows keyboard layout for the first time since the Windows key first appeared on its Natural Keyboard in 1994.

The Copilot key will, predictably, open up the Copilot generative AI assistant within Windows 10 and Windows 11. On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you can currently do the same thing by pressing Windows + C. For PCs without Copilot enabled, including those that aren’t signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search instead (though this is sort of redundant, since pressing the Windows key and then typing directly into the Start menu also activates the Search function).

A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn’t mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards “over time.” Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

If nothing else, this new key is a sign of how much Microsoft wants people to use Copilot and its other generative AI products. Plenty of past company initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to name a few—never managed to become baked into the hardware like this. In the Windows 8 epoch, Microsoft required OEMs to build a Windows button into the display bezel of devices with touchscreens, but that requirement eventually disappeared. If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the way Cortana was, the Copilot key could become a way to quickly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the way that changes to the Windows logo date keyboards from earlier eras.

We’ll definitely see more AI features from Microsoft this year, too—Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi called 2024 “the year of the AI PC” in today’s announcement.

Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all building neural processing units (NPUs) into their latest silicon, and we’ll likely see more updates for Windows apps and features that can take advantage of this new on-device processing capability. Rumors also indicate that we could see a “Windows 12” release as soon as this year; while Windows 11 has mostly had AI features stacked on top of it, a new OS could launch with AI features more deeply integrated into the UI and apps, as well as additional hardware requirements for some features.

Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. Surface devices with the revised keyboard layout are “upcoming.”

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994 Read More »

ny-times-copyright-suit-wants-openai-to-delete-all-gpt-instances

NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

AI, copyright, infringement, lawsuit, LLMs, microsoft, ny times, openai, Policy / /

Not the sincerest form of flattery —

Shows evidence that GPT-based systems will reproduce Times articles if asked.

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Image of a CPU on a motherboard with

Enlarge / Microsoft is named in the suit for allegedly building the system that allowed GPT derivatives to be trained using infringing material.

In August, word leaked out that The New York Times was considering joining the growing legion of creators that are suing AI companies for misappropriating their content. The Times had reportedly been negotiating with OpenAI regarding the potential to license its material, but those talks had not gone smoothly. So, eight months after the company was reportedly considering suing, the suit has now been filed.

The Times is targeting various companies under the OpenAI umbrella, as well as Microsoft, an OpenAI partner that both uses it to power its Copilot service and helped provide the infrastructure for training the GPT Large Language Model. But the suit goes well beyond the use of copyrighted material in training, alleging that OpenAI-powered software will happily circumvent the Times’ paywall and ascribe hallucinated misinformation to the Times.

Journalism is expensive

The suit notes that The Times maintains a large staff that allows it to do things like dedicate reporters to a huge range of beats and engage in important investigative journalism, among other things. Because of those investments, the newspaper is often considered an authoritative source on many matters.

All of that costs money, and The Times earns that by limiting access to its reporting through a robust paywall. In addition, each print edition has a copyright notification, the Times’ terms of service limit the copying and use of any published material, and it can be selective about how it licenses its stories. In addition to driving revenue, these restrictions also help it to maintain its reputation as an authoritative voice by controlling how its works appear.

The suit alleges that OpenAI-developed tools undermine all of that. “By providing Times content without The Times’s permission or authorization, Defendants’ tools undermine and damage The Times’s relationship with its readers and deprive The Times of subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue,” the suit alleges.

Part of the unauthorized use The Times alleges came during the training of various versions of GPT. Prior to GPT-3.5, information about the training dataset was made public. One of the sources used is a large collection of online material called “Common Crawl,” which the suit alleges contains information from 16 million unique records from sites published by The Times. That places the Times as the third most referenced source, behind Wikipedia and a database of US patents.

OpenAI no longer discloses as many details of the data used for training of recent GPT versions, but all indications are that full-text NY Times articles are still part of that process (Much more on that in a moment.) Expect access to training information to be a major issue during discovery if this case moves forward.

Not just training

A number of suits have been filed regarding the use of copyrighted material during training of AI systems. But the Times’ suit goes well beyond that to show how the material ingested during training can come back out during use. “Defendants’ GenAI tools can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style, as demonstrated by scores of examples,” the suit alleges.

The suit alleges—and we were able to verify—that it’s comically easy to get GPT-powered systems to offer up content that is normally protected by the Times’ paywall. The suit shows a number of examples of GPT-4 reproducing large sections of articles nearly verbatim.

The suit includes screenshots of ChatGPT being given the title of a piece at The New York Times and asked for the first paragraph, which it delivers. Getting the ensuing text is apparently as simple as repeatedly asking for the next paragraph.

ChatGPT has apparently closed that loophole in between the preparation of that suit and the present. We entered some of the prompts shown in the suit, and were advised “I recommend checking The New York Times website or other reputable sources,” although we can’t rule out that context provided prior to that prompt could produce copyrighted material.

Ask for a paragraph, and Copilot will hand you a wall of normally paywalled text.

Ask for a paragraph, and Copilot will hand you a wall of normally paywalled text.

John Timmer

But not all loopholes have been closed. The suit also shows output from Bing Chat, since rebranded as Copilot. We were able to verify that asking for the first paragraph of a specific article at The Times caused Copilot to reproduce the first third of the article.

The suit is dismissive of attempts to justify this as a form of fair use. “Publicly, Defendants insist that their conduct is protected as ‘fair use’ because their unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train GenAI models serves a new ‘transformative’ purpose,” the suit notes. “But there is nothing ‘transformative’ about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”

Reputational and other damages

The hallucinations common to AI also came under fire in the suit for potentially damaging the value of the Times’ reputation, and possibly damaging human health as a side effect. “A GPT model completely fabricated that “The New York Times published an article on January 10, 2020, titled ‘Study Finds Possible Link between Orange Juice and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,’” the suit alleges. “The Times never published such an article.”

Similarly, asking about a Times article on heart-healthy foods allegedly resulted in Copilot saying it contained a list of examples (which it didn’t). When asked for the list, 80 percent of the foods on weren’t even mentioned by the original article. In another case, recommendations were ascribed to the Wirecutter when the products hadn’t even been reviewed by its staff.

As with the Times material, it’s alleged that it’s possible to get Copilot to offer up large chunks of Wirecutter articles (The Wirecutter is owned by The New York Times). But the suit notes that these article excerpts have the affiliate links stripped out of them, keeping the Wirecutter from its primary source of revenue.

The suit targets various OpenAI companies for developing the software, as well as Microsoft—the latter for both offering OpenAI-powered services, and for having developed the computing systems that enabled the copyrighted material to be ingested during training. Allegations include direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement, as well as DMCA and trademark violations. Finally, it alleges “Common Law Unfair Competition By Misappropriation.”

The suit seeks nothing less than the erasure of both any GPT instances that the parties have trained using material from the Times, as well as the destruction of the datasets that were used for the training. It also asks for a permanent injunction to prevent similar conduct in the future. The Times also wants money, lots and lots of money: “statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity.”

NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances Read More »

big-tech-is-spending-more-than-vc-firms-on-ai-startups

Big Tech is spending more than VC firms on AI startups

AI, Amazon, chatgpt, Google, microsoft, openai, syndication / /

money cannon —

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon haved crowded out traditional Silicon Valley investors.

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A string of deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon amounted to two-thirds of the $27 billion raised by fledgling AI companies in 2023,

Enlarge / A string of deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon amounted to two-thirds of the $27 billion raised by fledgling AI companies in 2023,

FT montage/Dreamstime

Big tech companies have vastly outspent venture capital groups with investments in generative AI startups this year, as established giants use their financial muscle to dominate the much-hyped sector.

Microsoft, Google and Amazon last year struck a series of blockbuster deals, amounting to two-thirds of the $27 billion raised by fledgling AI companies in 2023, according to new data from private market researchers PitchBook.

The huge outlay, which exploded after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, highlights how the biggest Silicon Valley groups are crowding out traditional tech investors for the biggest deals in the industry.

The rise of generative AI—systems capable of producing humanlike video, text, image and audio in seconds—have also attracted top Silicon Valley investors. But VCs have been outmatched, having been forced to slow down their spending as they adjust to higher interest rates and falling valuations for their portfolio companies.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen the market quickly consolidate around a handful of foundation models, with large tech players coming in and pouring billions of dollars into companies like OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic and Mistral,” said Nina Achadjian, a partner at US venture firm Index Ventures referring to some of the top AI startups.

“For traditional VCs, you had to be in early and you had to have conviction—which meant being in the know on the latest AI research and knowing which teams were spinning out of Google DeepMind, Meta and others,” she added.

Financial Times

A string of deals, such as Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI as well as billions of dollars raised by San Francisco-based Anthropic from both Google and Amazon, helped push overall spending on AI groups to nearly three times as much as the previous record of $11 billion set two years ago.

Venture investing in tech hit record levels in 2021, as investors took advantage of ultra-low interest rates to raise and deploy vast sums across a range of industries, particularly those most disrupted by Covid-19.

Microsoft has also committed $1.3 billion to Inflection, another generative AI start-up, as it looks to steal a march on rivals such as Google and Amazon.

Building and training generative AI tools is an intensive process, requiring immense computing power and cash. As a result, start-ups have preferred to partner with Big Tech companies which can provide cloud infrastructure and access to the most powerful chips as well as dollars.

That has rapidly pushed up the valuations of private start-ups in the space, making it harder for VCs to bet on the companies at the forefront of the technology. An employee stock sale at OpenAI is seeking to value the company at $86 billion, almost treble the valuation it received earlier this year.

“Even the world’s top venture investors, with tens of billions under management, can’t compete to keep these AI companies independent and create new challengers that unseat the Big Tech incumbents,” said Patrick Murphy, founding partner at Tapestry VC, an early-stage venture capital firm.

“In this AI platform shift, most of the potentially one-in-a-million companies to appear so far have been captured by the Big Tech incumbents already.”

VCs are not absent from the market, however. Thrive Capital, Josh Kushner’s New York-based firm, is the lead investor in OpenAI’s employee stock sale, having already backed the company earlier this year. Thrive has continued to invest throughout a downturn in venture spending in 2023.

Paris-based Mistral raised around $500 million from investors including venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst, and chipmaker Nvidia since it was founded in May this year.

Some VCs are seeking to invest in companies building applications that are being built over so-called “foundation models” developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, in much the same way apps began being developed on mobile devices in the years after smartphones were introduced.

“There is this myth that only the foundation model companies matter,” said Sarah Guo, founder of AI-focused venture firm Conviction. “There is a huge space of still-unexplored application domains for AI, and a lot of the most valuable AI companies will be fundamentally new.”

Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw.

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