The year I became an avatar

Plus: ChatGPT, Hollywood strikes, OpenAI's Sam Altman and more [Bloomberg]( This is the Theme of the Week edition of [Bloomberg Opinion Today](, a digest of our top commentary published every Sunday. New subscribers to the newsletter can [sign up here](; follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [X](, [Threads]( and [Facebook](. 2023 will remembered for many things, but AI might take the cake for being the most memorable. In a special video for Bloomberg Opinion, Parmy Olson [takes us through the year in AI](. It’s hard to believe that ChatGPT launched a little more than a year ago — and it’s even harder to imagine what it will look like in a year. Suddenly, everyone could get answers to any question in beautifully human prose. Midjourney allowed us to conjure any image we could think of — from a raccoon in space, to a lifelike portrait of Muhammed Ali. And soon enough, humans had a hard time [distinguishing]( genuine images of historic figures from AI-generated ones: It’s no wonder why tech firms are in the middle of an arms race to launch their own products that use so-called generative AI. In the beginning, artificial intelligence tools were mostly used to analyze information. Now, generative AI can produce content, often as well as humans can. This poses a threat to artists everywhere, and they are fighting back [in court]( and on the streets. For the first time in more than six decades, both [Hollywood writers and actors]( walked off the job this year to demand better protections against AI. Scriptwriters pressed studios to promise not to use ChatGPT, and celebrities fought to hold onto their autonomy — a right that is increasingly under threat now that AI can recreate a person’s likeness at the drop of a hat. Earlier this year, Parmy got a taste of what our future may hold when she visited Synthesia, a company that specializes in creating avatars for more than 15,000 businesses, including McDonald’s, Accenture and Amazon. “The goal is to train an AI model to create a digital clone of myself,” she [wrote]( at the time. Parmy’s [final avatar]( — which only took her two hours to make in the studio — was eerily lifelike, although there were some [telltale signs]( that something was slightly off. Her voice, for one, was a strange amalgamation of Siri and Parmy. And her body movements were somewhat glitchy and unnatural: Still, Parmy says the spread of these avatars is “one of the most head-spinning impacts of the rapid advances” of AI, “which can now conjure artwork, mimic voices in music, clone entire faces and bodies, generate pop songs, screenplays, short stories and news articles. It hammers a virtual nail in the coffin of the creative process we know today, accelerating a transformation that is seeing humans outsource the work of their imagination.” Just this week, we saw Russian President Vladimir Putin confront his AI “[double](” at a [press conference](. You can only imagine what digital horrors may be lurking around the corner. Source: RT via X Researchers also [warned]( that AI models could perpetuate gender and racial stereotypes because of their biased training data, and it didn’t help that OpenAI was becoming more secretive about how its models worked. The company looked even more suspect in November when [its board](, whose job was to make sure OpenAI created AI safely, fired CEO Sam Altman for not being candid with them. Despite all these concerns, companies like [Microsoft]( and [Google]( have rushed ahead to plug generative AI into the software they sell to consumers and enterprises, creating [new assistants]( that can do everything from writing emails to producing computer code. That will save hours of time, sure. But this unregulated, untested technology could also kill many jobs and and has the potential to worsen prejudices. In less than a year, we went from merely [wondering]( whether ChatGPT would replace journalists to seeing networks deploy AI-generated [news anchors]( and [writers](. What else will this technology be capable of in another 12 months? And who should we trust with its future — and, as many fear, the future of humanity? Notes: Let Parmy know what you think by sending her a note at polson29@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? 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