AI does not impress everyone: Is ChatGPT a worthy investment for Microsoft to push further?

All Microsoft products will soon use ChatGPT, but not everyone is impressed with the AI technology. This raises the question of whether the chatbot is really a worthy investment for the company, especially since it is investing billions of dollars for its further development under the hands of its creator, OpenAI.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT will soon be available not just on Azure OpenAI Service, Bing, or Office apps, but on all of Microsoft’s products, according to company CEO Satya Nadella at a Wall Street Journal panel at the World Economic Forum’s 2023 event. Given that AI seems to be the next big thing, this plan is no surprise. However, the idea of ChatGPT appears not to excite everyone, such as Australian singer and songwriter Nick Cave. On his blog, Cave shared a song sent by a fan, who said it was generated by ChatGPT in the songwriter’s style. Here are some of the lines posted on the blog.

Verse 1:

In the depths of the night, I hear a call

A voice that echoes, through the hall

It’s a siren’s song, that pulls me in

Takes me to a place, where I can’t begin

Chorus:

I am the sinner, I am the saint

I am the darkness, I am the light

I am the hunter, I am the prey

I am the devil, I am the savior

While Cave responded politely to the sender, he didn’t mince words describing ChatGPT. The songwriter directly said the song “sucks” and is a “travesty” and “bullsh*t.” Cave further described it as “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human” and stressed, “ChatGPT has no inner being.”

“What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song. It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque,” writes Cave. “ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.”

Cave is not the first to criticize ChatGPT or AI technology in general. Even during the first months of ChatGPT’s availability, it has already received doubts. Many people continue to treat the entire AI technology the same way, and they have the right to do so. Recently, internet users discovered CNET published numerous feature articles composed by artificial intelligence. The American media website admitted the act and called it an “experiment.” The discovery, however, was not the biggest problem of CNET, but the errors AI made in composing many articles. On Tuesday, the website started issuing correction notices for the faulty articles (via Futurism), but the impression this mistake made would probably last a little longer. This affects the image of the whole AI technology and ChatGPT in particular. With this, will ChatGPT really make a significant difference for Microsoft products? Will it charm more customers and deliver business benefits for Microsoft? Or will it just be an investment mistake, a momentary trend, and another CNET case that will soon push people to further doubt AI technology?

What are your thoughts about this?