Werner Coetzee, Data Sciences Corporation. Photo: Karolina Komendera

In 2020, a designer created realistic photos of Roman emperors, using artificial intelligence to render likenesses from their marble statues. By mid-2022, image generators were remixing artworks to create astounding visuals using only text prompts. Artists began to panic. Then in December, OpenAI unleashed its newest AI language model, GPT-3, through a chatbot called ChatGPT.

ChatGPT generates original and highly articulate text in different lengths and tones. It’s so good that the AI threatens to make school essays extinct and has passed entrance exams to business and medical schools. Its impact on the zeitgeist is tremendous, breaking all records for the fastest growth and usage among user apps. Even the hottest social networks don’t come close to its meteoritic rise, and firms are already rushing to include generative AI tools in their business apps and search engines.