2023 and the AI revolution

Companies creating AI services have, in a way, sneaked up on the regular consumer over the years. With applications like Siri on our iPhones and smart writing improvements like Grammarly. This kind of propriety technology will continue to evolve, but I believe that 2023 will be a year that will see many more open projects being created and that will lay the foundations of commercial use cases that we have not seen before.

Let me give you some examples; I signed up for the testing of ChatGPT. This is a project made by OpenAI that has taken the world by storm.

I gave the command:

create a social media post about what 2023 will bring for the african people in relation to financial inclusion        

The output of ChatGPT was:

"As we ring in the new year, it's exciting to think about all the progress and advancements that 2023 will bring for the African people. One area that I'm particularly hopeful about is financial inclusion.

Over the past few years, we've seen significant strides made in bringing more people in Africa into the formal financial system. This includes initiatives like mobile banking and digital payment platforms, which have made it easier for people to access financial services without having to visit a bank branch physically.

In 2023, I expect to see even more innovations in this space as more people across Africa gain access to these technologies. This will not only make it easier for individuals to manage their money, but it will also help stimulate economic growth and development in the region.

Here's to a bright and prosperous future for Africa in 2023!

That is amazing stuff! For me, this looks like a human, not an algorithm, wrote it, let us try another one:

I gave the command:

write a letter to investors about good results in 2022, but expecting 2023 to bring challenges. The tone should be positive.        

The output was:

Dear Investors,

I am pleased to report that 2022 was a strong year for our company. We achieved record profits and saw significant growth in both revenue and market share. This success is a testament to our team's hard work and dedication, and we are grateful for your support.

Looking ahead to 2023, we expect to face some challenges. The market is becoming increasingly competitive, and we anticipate that we will need to continue to innovate and adapt in order to stay ahead. However, we are confident in our ability to rise to these challenges and continue to deliver strong results.

We are committed to transparent communication and will keep you informed of our progress as we navigate the year ahead. Thank you for your ongoing support and confidence in our team.

Sincerely,

Now, one of the really cool things about ChatGPT is that it understands the context, and you can keep "chatting" with it, and it will take into consideration earlier information, so I kept on with the command:

Talk more about reduced profit in 2023        

And the output became:

Dear Investors,

I am writing to provide an update on our performance for the year 2023. While we are proud of the strong results we achieved in 2022, we regret to inform you that we are expecting a reduction in profits for the current year.

There are several factors contributing to this decline. The market has become increasingly competitive, and we have faced some unexpected challenges that have affected our bottom line. However, we are confident that we have the resources and expertise to address these issues and return to strong performance in the coming year.

We understand that this news may be concerning, but we want to assure you that we are taking all necessary steps to minimize the impact of these challenges on our business. We remain committed to delivering value to our investors and are confident that our long-term prospects are bright.

Thank you for your continued support and confidence in our team. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

Amazing stuff, I can't wait to see how this will affect and improve numerous services around the world in 2023. But let us have a look at another thing I believe will be big in 2023, the creation of AI art.

AI artwork

I was testing a service called Midjourney. They have created a bot that lives inside a Discord server. So I started by giving the command:

beautiful winter landscape inspired by the new year         

What happens next is that it will give you some examples in low resolution as a starting point; the ones that I got back were:

I liked the direction in picture number four, so I asked it to make some variations of it, and the result that came back was:

I then asked it to upscale number two, and the final version ended up like this:

This is a game-changer. I mean, we have all tried searching for images on Google, I we have all been impressed by how accurately Google can "understand" the context of the pictures compared to our search string, but here we are creating new art. Off course, you might argue that this is just building on other work since there obviously has been a lot of training material given to the AI. But again, on the other side, most art is inspired by others anyway.

Moving on, I wanted to see if I could make some artwork more related to my work and gave the command:

realistic african woman looking a her mobile while paying at the store in rural area?        

And I got these four suggestions:

I wanted to variations of picture 1 and 4, and the results was this:

I upscaled my favourite and ended up with:

Well, that's it for now. I'm really enthusiastic about how algorithms like the ones I just showed you will change and inspire other commercial products that we use every day in 2023. Happy new year.