Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than ever, with a new crop of generative AI programs that are creating art, videos, humor, fake news, and plenty of controversy. The technologies powering this latest slate of tools have been in the works for years, but the public release of these programs—particularly a new chatbot enabled by OpenAI’s GPT system—represents a big step forward for machine intelligence. Same with the image-generating app Lensa, which creates painterly selfies that have captured the public’s imagination. Now, engineers are asking chat programs for coding help, students are using AI to generate book reports instantly, and researchers are testing the tools’ ethical boundaries. It's all gotten very weird, but AI is about to get bigger and even weirder still.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED artificial intelligence reporter Will Knight joins us to talk about ChatGPT, how generative AI has grown up since the early days, and what the latest tools mean for everything from school book reports to online disinformation campaigns.

Show Notes

Read Will’s WIRED story about ChatGPT. He’s also written a bunch of recent stories about generative AI. Follow all of WIRED’s AI coverage. Read more about Lensa from Olivia Snow. Try the new chatbot for yourself.

Recommendations

Will recommends the Tractive GPS Tracker for Cats. Mike recommends Das Keyboard MacTigr keyboard, which he reviewed this week. Lauren recommends that you keep an eye on your keys using a Tile or AirTag tracker.

Will Knight can be found on Twitter @willknight. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.