In November 2022, the artificial intelligence-based tool ChatGPT was released. It was immediately considered revolutionary, attracting its share of fans and detractors. Some saw it as a threat to many existing tools and even professions. The field of possibilities is extremely vast and ChatGPT has not finished surprising as it will undoubtedly evolve in the months and years to come.

 
But what is this strange tool that has turned the digital world upside down? What is its use? What can we expect or fear from this new application? Here are some attempts to answer all these questions.

The history of ChatGPT

First of all, ChatGPT is owned by the American company OpenAI. AI, which stands for "artificial intelligence." It was founded as a partnership in December 2015 by the famous Elon Musk and Sam Altman, among others, with a budget of $1 billion. The founders also include Peter Thiel and Reed Hoffman, partners of Elon Musk since the creation of PayPal. Both Elon and Sam were presidents of OpenAI, but the former left in 2018.

In March 2019, the nonprofit will change its status to a private business corporation to raise capital. The San Francisco-based company is seeking partnerships to develop the capabilities and benefits of artificial intelligence in a variety of fields. A $100 million fund has been allocated for these startup partnerships.

In 2019, Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in the company. But in early 2023, the computer giant will significantly increase the amount: there is talk of an investment of $ 10 billion. In 2023, after revealing the ChatGPT product to the world, the company will be valued at $ 29 billion. And by 2024, OpenAI expects to generate $1 billion in revenue!

Considering the amount of money, the skill of the founders and the incredible potential of this tool, it's easy to understand the ChatGPT fever that has broken out online since its release.

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a conversational agent with artificial intelligence, also called "conversational agent" or "chatbot". It is an innovative virtual assistant trained on a huge amount of data and with amazing capabilities.

What is ChatGPT used for today?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant that uses huge amounts of data and integrates it as requests come in. It is therefore a trained chatbot that continues to improve through augmented and machine learning.

It is therefore a tool that synthesizes data very quickly to provide a text or information. A conversational robot capable of holding a conversation in many languages and therefore of translating. It understands the questions asked and expresses its thoughts in a language almost similar to ours. This makes it a highly developed tool for communicating on the Internet.


By typing a few precise and targeted questions, ChatGPT almost instantly produces more or less interesting answers, depending on what you are looking for.

With some basic information about the child's story, such as the character's name, background, etc., ChatGPT is able to provide the right answers for the child. With the right amount of words and all the data laid out to form a whole! Just add a character or scene and the conversational agent takes over the story, incorporating new concepts.

It can be asked to summarize a text, express ideas from it or find the title of a book (or any other content created). But the tool is also capable of producing calculations, generating code, email templates, etc. However, while ChatGPT is amazing, it quickly reaches its limits if you push it a bit.

The limits of ChatGPT's capabilities and the problems it poses

The ability is still limited for specific questions on complex topics, such as math or coding. Despite its brilliant answers, ChatGPT often answers technical questions incorrectly. It does not yet have access to all the information available in the world.

When it comes to text creation, the possibilities are truly enormous. The speed and automation of content creation come to mind. But despite the good results, the tool cannot replace human beings. The soul of the content is inevitably missing... and that's quite normal!

Another limitation of ChatGPT is that it does not yet have access to data after 2021. Therefore, questions about events after that date will not be answered.

But we can be sure that this will change quickly, and the prototype has already surprised more than one specialist who wanted to test it in their own area of expertise. It should be noted that the artificial intelligence can perform a large number of updates per second!

Artificial intelligence has already proven itself in many fields, such as music, painting or poetry, and with excellent results.

The problem with such a sophisticated text generator is that students quickly realized that they could use this tool to write an essay, solve a math problem, etc. This is the modern, high-tech cheating that worries teachers. Several measures have already been taken, such as banning the application or using tools to detect texts written with TPGs.

As with all digital tools, harmful use is also to be feared.

Google vs ChatGPT, the war is declared

The technology community was stunned when ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. Unsurprisingly, Google immediately perceived a direct threat to its search engine.

That's because ChatGPT provides accurate answers to questions that don't require interpretation, in record time and in an expert conversational style. On Google, you type a question and look for the answer in sentences.
And as if that weren't enough, Bing, Google's rival search engine, may soon integrate ChatGPT. Microsoft has already invested and has no intention of stopping. Bing's user satisfaction could increase significantly, which would help build loyalty among potential customers.


We understand why S. Pichai, the boss of Google, is worried. He would have held several internal meetings to direct the strategy of his "Artificial Intelligence" division by pushing for change. These are actions aimed at mobilizing the troops in the hope of unveiling new products at a future conference.

Google has been working on artificial intelligence and conversational agents for some time. The giant has already introduced LaMDA, which is able to converse naturally with humans. The slow pace of its development is due to the fear that the language model could become obnoxious or spread fake news.

However, Google has not yet said its last word. After all, a search engine is not an application for online chat, and vice versa! The purposes and uses are not exactly the same.

For simple questions, without possible interpretations in the answers, ChatGPT is very useful. But if you want to go deeper into the nuances and find different opinions, a Google search would be more appropriate. The latter offers a wide range of options with text, images, videos, links... While ChatGPT provides an automatic answer, which depends on the purpose of the question.

Moreover, Google is not only a search engine, as it provides a whole range of services. It is an established giant that currently has more data than ChatGPT.

ChatGPT for a fee, a flop?

Free for a while, ChatGPT soon released a premium package. User feedback shows subscriptions of several dozen euros per month ($42) for this so-called professional subscription. The stated goal of this monetization is to "ensure long-term profitability". The number of users is very high and so are the operating costs. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, states the following.

This is why a solution to monetize the tool has been sought for some time. An improved pro version has been developed.

The high number of users at peak times was creating problems that subscribers would no longer have to deal with. They will have access to more features, and let's not forget that ChatGPT is still in its infancy. Perhaps the features will evolve in the coming months.

The free version will probably be limited in features and functions compared to the free version. However, the two services should coexist in the long run, as they do not target the same audience.

The free version of the service will certainly be appreciated by those who use it only occasionally or for simple and quick queries. On the other hand, an optimized version with its different services could become indispensable for some professionals, as it happened with Google and many other digital tools.

Perhaps a professional subscription could also discourage the little scoundrels who only want to use ChatGPT for fraud...

In a nutshell, ChatGPT is an online chat application. A conversational tool capable of understanding the user and providing the best possible answers. The potential is huge and the application should continue to evolve in the near future. However, artificial intelligence still has its limits!