The use of AI chatbots appears to be on the rise, as Google’s AI chatbot, Bard, will be available to teens in most countries starting Thursday, and ChatGPT was forced to temporarily pause new signups due to demand.
In a blog post On Wednesday, Google outlined the potential applications among teens, highlighting prompts such as writing a speech for the class president and project ideas for science fairs. Bard will also allow teens to type or upload a math equation and then provide step-by-step instructions on how to solve it.
The tech giant says it has also consulted child safety and development experts about using the chatbot among teens, who can use it as early as age 13 in the US. Among the safeguards, Bard will introduce “double checking.” feature that verifies answers against content on the Internet, as well as security features that prevent illegal or unsafe content from appearing in the answers.
Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X this week that the company is temporarily pausing new signups for ChatGPT after hosting its first developer conference earlier this month. At the conference, the company introduced a number of initiatives, including a preview of a more advanced large-language model expected to launch in the coming weeks.
“(We) are pausing new ChatGPT Plus signups 🙁 the post-devday usage surge has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience. You can still sign up to be notified within the app when subscriptions reopen,” Altman wrote on Tuesday.
As chatbots expand their user base, they remain a hot-button issue within the Hollywood industry. One of the sticking points during the writers’ strike was negotiating safeguards around studios using AI to write scripts and the use of human writers’ scripts to train chatbots.
Ultimately, the Writers Guild of America and the studios agreed to a deal that does not ban the use of AI, but states that work created by AI must be made public by both parties and does not affect credit or compensation the writers. However, there is also language built in that Signal studios are looking for writers to collaborate with AI tools, such as chatbots.
