The Atlantic

ChatGPT Is Turning the Internet Into Plumbing

What does life online look like filtered through a bot?
Source: Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

There is a tension at the heart of ChatGPT that may soon snap. Does the technology expand our world or constrain it? Which is to say, do AI-powered chatbots open new doors to learning and discovery, or do they instead risk siloing off information and leaving us stuck with unreliable access to truth?

Earlier today, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, announced a partnership with the media conglomerate Axel Springer that seems to get us closer to an answer. Under the arrangement, ChatGPT will gain the capacity to present its users with “summaries and . The details are not altogether clear, but the indicates that when you query ChatGPT, the bot will be able to spin up responses based on Axel Springer stories, accompanied by links to the stories themselves. Likewise, material from Axel Springer publications will be used as training data for OpenAI, advancing the company’s products—which may have already consumed something .

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