USA - ChatGPT to ‘See, Hear and Speak’
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is getting a major update that will enable the viral chatbot to have voice conversations with users and interact using images, moving it closer to popular artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like Apple’s Siri.
Similar AI services like Siri, Google voice assistant and Amazon.com’s Alexa are integrated with the devices they run on and are often used to set alarms and reminders, and deliver information off the internet.
Since its debut last year, ChatGPT has been adopted by companies for a wide range of tasks from summarizing documents to writing computer code, setting off a race amongst Big Tech companies to launch their own offerings based on generative AI.
ChatGPT’s new voice feature can also narrate bedtime stories, settle debates at the dinner table, and speak out loud text input from users.
-www.reuters.com, 25 September 2023
Commentary
We have been watching the development of artificial intelligence with some interest lately. This year in particular has seen stunning advances in “large language models” (LLM), which has resulted in these computer algorithms mimicking conversation so well that they almost seem alive. Nevertheless, they are deterministic algorithms that are in fact just advanced predictive text engines.
Still, this technology seems to leapfrog itself month after month, blowing aways expectations each time. Reuters’ headline, “OpenAI’s ChatGPT will ‘see, hear and speak’” of course caught our eye, since it reminds us of Revelation 13:15: “And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” To be clear, we do not say this technology is the image of the beast; Revelation 13 makes it clear that it is the beast (Antichrist) who will “give life unto the image of the beast.” We are, however, living in a time when technology can convincingly mimic human thought and communication for the first time. -By J. Froese
Arno Froese is the executive director of Midnight Call Ministries and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed prophetic magazines Midnight Call and News From Israel. He has authored a number of well-received books, and has sponsored many prophecy conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. His extensive travels have contributed to his keen insight into Bible prophecy, as he sees it from an international perspective.
