AI agents are on their way

OpenAI used its inaugural developers conference last Monday in San Francisco to announce the arrival of a customisable version of ChatGPT.

The new AI chatbots are called GPTs (which stands for generative pre-trained transformer) and are available to OpenAI’s enterprise and ChatGPT Plus customers.

GPTs require no knowledge of coding to create; they can be built entirely with written instructions.

Unlike the all-purpose ChatGPT chatbot, the GPTs are meant to be programmed for specific tasks. For example, the GPTs that OpenAI created to give people a flavour of the new tool include a maths tutor, and a bot that explains the rules of card and board games.

GPTs can also be trained on private data sets (which OpenAI says it will not incorporate into ChatGPT unless given permission) and connected to other programs, like calendars and emails, to carry out tasks on behalf of the user.

Like Apple did with the App Store, OpenAI is also planning to launch a platform where people can share the GPTs they have created with the world and earn money if lots of people use them.

The first interesting thing about the announcement is that it confirms how OpenAI intends to make money, in the near term at least. An analyst at research firm SemiAnalysis estimated in April that it could be costing OpenAI as much as $700,000 per day to keep ChatGPT running, so revenue is a priority for the company.

And it makes sense for OpenAI to position itself as a platform. ChatGPT is a nifty product, but it’s far more lucrative to own the plumbing upon which an entire industry is built. OpenAI probably wouldn’t have much luck selling shares at a valuation of $86bn (which it is reportedly trying to do) with a business plan built on subscriptions.

GPTs are also interesting because they look like the next step towards creating personal AI agents or models.

‘A model, in a sense, is a simulation of you – your digital alter ego,’ Pedro Domingos, emeritus professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, told Contagious in an interview in 2016. And he predicted that eventually, we would ‘run our entire lives using them.’

The prime function of models, said Domingos, will be to act as our gatekeepers, to filter out the irrelevant information that we are bombarded with every day and pass on only the stuff that they think, based on inputs and behaviours, merits our attention.

And if Domingos' vision comes to pass, it's going to have large ramifications for the ad industry. ‘Marketing is going to have to target your model because, if it doesn’t get past your model, you’re never going to see it in the first place,’ he explained.

It's been a year since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world, and since then there has been a lot of fretting about whether and to what extent artificial intelligence is going to take over the jobs of creatives, strategists and marketers. Maybe it's time to start contemplating a future when it replaces customers, too.

Campaign of the week / Recipe Run

Opportunism is an underrated virtue in marketing, especially when it comes to building brand fame. You’d be amazed at how far you can go just by being ready and able to capitalise on lucky breaks.

KFC in Spain, for instance, noticed that one of the characters in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was a thinly disguised tribute to its founder and mascot, Colonel Sanders. And spotting this for the opportunity that it was, the fast-food chain worked with creative agency PS21 to organise a contest, challenging players to (within the game) collect 11 herbs and spices and then use them to cook a chicken in the fastest time.

KFC asked entrants to upload footage of themselves completing the challenge on social media to be in with a chance of winning a top prize of $11,600. In one week, there were 2,500 entrants, and KFC experienced a 58% increase in web traffic throughout the duration of the promotion. Read our full analysis here. Contagious.

Dove at Most Contagious London 2023

Dove’s fight against unrealistic beauty standards is one of the most enduring and successful purpose campaigns of all time.

?At Most Contagious London, Dove VP Firdaous El Honsali will be on stage with Jo Bacon and Daniel Fisher from Ogilvy to talk about the latest iteration of the brand’s campaign for real beauty.

Join us on 7 December to learn how Dove is taking the fight to social media to protect children’s self-esteem, and galvanising people to take action against toxic body-image ideals.

And that’s not all. At Most Contagious you’ll also hear how Mattel reinvented Barbie for the 21st century and helped the 64-year-old doll become a cultural phenomenon again, get briefed on the year ahead by the Economist, and learn about the marketing trends that will shape the industry in 2024. Contagious.

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