The Atlantic

We Programmed ChatGPT Into This Article. It’s Weird.

Please don’t embarrass us, robots.
Source: Daniel Zender / The Atlantic; Getty

ChatGPT, the internet-famous AI text generator, has taken on a new form. Once a website you could visit, it is now a service that you can integrate into software of all kinds, from spreadsheet programs to delivery apps to magazine websites such as this one. Snapchat added ChatGPT to its chat service (it suggested that users might type “Can you write me a haiku about my cheese-obsessed friend Lukas?”), and Instacart plans to add a recipe robot. Many more will follow.

They will be weirder than you might think. Instead of one big AI chat app that delivers knowledge or cheese poetry, the ChatGPT service (and others like it) will become an AI confetti bomb that sticks to everything. AI text in your grocery app. AI text in your workplace-compliance courseware. AI text in your HVAC how-to guide. AI text everywhere—even later in this article—thanks to an API.

is one of those three-letter acronyms that computer people throw around. It stands for “application programming interface”: It allows software applications to talk to one another. That’s useful because software often needs to make use of the

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