ChatGPT is now online
What digital progressives can expect
ChatGPT now has access to the internet. And it’s about time since it’s ability to provide relevant, up-to-date information has been a weakness. Access is available for ChatGPT Plus, and rolling out soon to free users soon through plug-in.
Until recently, one of the biggest drawbacks to using ChatGPT was it’s unreliability for current events and a fast moving news cycle, without data beyond September 2021.
This is the self portrait of ChatGPT when asked how it feels about being connected to the internet. Apparently it’s pretty stoked.
Does this mean ChatGPT is now a search engine? The term ‘search engine’ might need to fade away in favor of another term for what these tools really are: information companions(?) – needs workshopping.
We know ChatGPT in particular to be of the worst offenders when it comes to hallucinations in answers and accuracy, and this integration with Bing (even though an inferior search engine), is welcome step to help curb this problem in whatever way it can.
Good news! Linked citations.
OpenAI indicated that ChatGPT will provide citations to linked sources in the integration, which is good news for both searchers and digital marketers. Although trust in generative AI for search is increasing, Americans have mixed levels of trust in AI powered search results, with most maintaining some level of distrust citing concerns in accuracy, bias, and transparency of search results provided by AI. This may be a game changer to at least help boost trust in transparency and accuracy of results as well as giving content creators and publishers credit and potentially traffic.
Digital progressives should be prepared for data voids.
This integration poses the challenge of exacerbating data voids, and digital progressives will need to be ready to help solve for this problem. ChatGPT is trained on public data which means data voids and existing biases could be exacerbated. Similarly from a search perspective, because search engines use content (public data) as a data source to learn from and serve relevant answers to the search intent, data voids can be caused by an imbalance of available content on a subject or for an intent. What I’m saying is that part of the problem with the proliferation of right wing content and disinformation, at least from a search perspective, is the imbalance of content available from the left. This means we’ll need to have strong, authoritative content marketing strategies to create a balance and breakthrough biases.
Will ChatGPT now be the new default and go to for search? Not yet.
While adoption for leveraging AI for tasks is growing, most Americans still don’t trust it. For now, Google remain the dominant source of search and access to information. In terms of usage, adoption, and even trust, already we’re seeing some differences based on context.
Google vs ChatGPT? Should you optimize for ChatGPT now? Let’s prepare for both.
Whether it’s a search engine or an AI chatbot, as long as there is a need for information or tasks to complete, people will go somewhere to learn more. Content will always be in demand, and digital progressives should be there to assist in their journey. It’s our responsibility as digital marketers in social causes and campaigns to influence the discovery of this information and be there throughout the process.
AI is bringing a lot of changes to the quality of content served and information based on better contextual knowledge. Keep quality content at the center of your content marketing and you’re mostly there.
To access internet powered answers from ChatGPT, you’ll need to select the to either browse with Bing or select one of the various plugins.
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