AI Marketing Ethics Digest Extra

Update on what's happening in the world of generative AI

Sep 29, 2023

I wanted to bring you some big news on the generative AI front. Not all of it has to do with ethics, but as marketers, keeping abreast of what’s taking place is worth your while.

ChatGPT can now ‘see,’ ‘hear,’ and ‘speak.’

OpenAI announced Monday that ChatGPT now has voice and image capabilities.

“We are beginning to roll out new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT. They offer a new, more intuitive type of interface by allowing you to have a voice conversation or show ChatGPT what you’re talking about.”

OpenAI is rolling out the new features gradually. From an ethics standpoint, let’s hope ChatGPT “sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil.”

One statement in the announcement caught my attention: “OpenAI’s goal is to build AGI that is safe and beneficial.”

AGI (artificial general intelligence) is a hypothetical form of artificial intelligence in which a machine can learn and think like a human. AGI requires models to have self-awareness and consciousness to solve problems, adapt to their surroundings, and perform a broader range of tasks.

That’s OpenAI’s ultimate goal, and the new features are but one step down a very long path to AI sentience. If it sounds like sci-fi, it is… until it isn’t.

But wait; there’s more…

ChatGPT can now ‘see’ the internet

According to The Rundown, ChatGPT can once again access the web via ~~Google~~, er, make that Bing.

“ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users can enable web browsing, with the feature expanding to the free tier shortly.”

Plus users have been able to use plugins like WebPilot and KeyMate.AI to connect to the web. Now, that’s no longer necessary (sorry, plugin developers… you may have to find another job). To enable Bing, go to “Settings & Beta” > Beta Features and toggle the Browse with Bing switch to on.

Amazon will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic.

According to the announcement, “AWS will become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads, providing our team with access to leading compute infrastructure in the form of AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips, which will be used in addition to existing solutions for model training and deployment. Together, we’ll combine our respective expertise to collaborate on the development of future Trainium and Inferentia technology.”

Organizations will be able to use Claude 2 for a wide range of tasks, from sophisticated dialogue and creative content generation to complex reasoning and detailed instruction,” the announcement said.

The announcement touts that Amazon’s investment will lead to a “safer AI.”

For more about Claude, read our post: Anthropic’s Claude: AI with a Conscience. We suggested that Claude is, so far, the most ethical of all the GAI platforms, thanks to “constitutional AI.”

Spotify is going to clone podcasters’ voices and translate them into other languages.

A partnership with OpenAI will let podcasters replicate their voices to create foreign-language versions of their shows automatically.

“The company has partnered with a handful of podcasters to translate their English-language episodes into Spanish with its new tool, and it has plans to roll out French and German translations in the coming weeks.”

The company didn’t elaborate on how widely it planned to make the tool available or when to expect an expansion.

AI Marketing Ethics Digest is moving to a weekly publishing schedule

With the help of our new co-editor

Kristina Martin

, we’re moving to a weekly publishing schedule that will include posts from Kristina and me, plus interviews and guest posts with and from AI ethicists and marketers.

If you know someone who would be a good candidate to interview or write a guest post (maybe that’s you), email me the person’s name and contact information.

Otherwise, we would love your thoughts and opinions on the developments mentioned above and what they mean from a marketing and ethics standpoint. Please feel free to leave a comment.