I thought I had a new version of ChatGpt

When ChatGpt is available again in Italy, after the Guarantor’s blockit seemed to me that it had changed. It feels strange to say, we are still talking about an artificial intelligence. But in fact the creature of OpenAI, in my eyes, it was no longer the same.

The main screen, which previously housed the “classic” three columns containing “examples”, “capabilities” of the AI ​​and warnings on limits and risks, has been transformed into a much richer interface dedicated to “prompts”, i.e. to the text commands that users use to ask the machine to generate certain responses.

“Recommend 10 games for my daughter’s birthday party”, to be clear, is a “prompt”. As well as “Write a marketing strategy for my brand”.

I discovered the “new ChatGpt” by chance. The day it became available again in our country, I immediately logged in. But I accidentally selected a different Google account from what I always used to take advantage of OpenAI smart chat. Basically, I re-registered for the service. And most importantly, I inadvertently did it on Chrome. Me accessing ChatGpt usually with Firefox.

I was facing a revolution?

The guide

How to use ChatGpt

by Pier Luigi Pisa

February 20, 2023

The spartan interface of the past, the one that has characterized the service since its debut in November 2022, has given way to a series of “prompts” organized by category. There are those designed for blog writers, for those who publish content on social media, for copywriters, to improve their texts, to better write a curriculum vitae or an email.

By clicking on each of these categories, you access a further list of examples ready to be used. By selecting “Social Media Content”for example, you can follow the guidelines to write your own “Bio” to use on your profile, or to better promote an event.

By clicking on “Write a bio for social media”finally, you access the actual panel which leads to the generation of the text. Each of these has sentences highlighted in yellow that must be replaced with the requested personal information.

The window in question, which guides the user step by step to the generation of the text, with numbers that make everything look like a simple tutorial, has another important function: you can choose the tone you want – colloquial, for example, or formal, or defiant – and then we can also choose the language in which we want to get the answer. Among these, of course, there is Italian.

On the left of the main screen, however, resist archived chats and account settings. At the bottom, there is still the white box where you can write a prompt of your choice, exactly as you do with the “previous” version of ChatGpt.

I initially thought it was a platform upgrade. She made sense, after all. I thought the startup led by Sam Altman was willing to retain on its platform all those users who, in search of the “right” or “perfect” prompt, usually turn to third party sites. Some of these even offer paid prompts.

But by asking around, colleagues and friends, I realized that I was the only one using the “new” interface. For a few days I deluded myself that I was among the “chosen ones” who had a new version available, maybe in testing phase. Because, in fact, everything worked perfectly.

But there was something strange. The “new ChatGpt”, for example, appeared only when I accessed from the desktop. On mobile, it was identical to before. On the web then, and in particular on Twitter, where there is obsessive attention towards the news on ChatGpt, there was no trace of the “version” I was using.

Yet the address was the “official” one, chat.openai.com, and the graphics identical to the one used by OpenAI. But clicking on “Top Propmpts”For example, I was directed to an external site, a community called Datafit.ai, whose users share their best prompts. This was also rather strange: OpenAI should have announced, somehow, such an important partnership.

In short, after a few days I started to think that my “new ChatGpt” was a kind of “mask”, affixed perfectly on top of the real ChatGpt and able to take advantage of the OpenAI technology. I did some further research along these lines and ended up on reddit, where there’s always someone better than you at this stuff. And there I intercepted a user who asked himself the same questions.

Among the comments, someone asked if any were active “extension” on Chromei.e. those “apps” that can be installed on the browser to perform certain operations while we browse, without the need to open a specific program.

Bingo.

It was actually a Chrome extension that I installed a few months ago that created that strange short circuit. Is called AIPRM For ChatGPT – Chatonai, and I remembered installing it because it offered the ability to use ChatGpt when browsing the web, especially when searching Google. But I never imagined that an extension of this type, however effective, could adhere like a glove to the original OpenAI platform, so as to change its look.

I tried uninstalling this extension and ChatGpt, indeed, it’s back to how it was when it started out.

Artificial intelligence

The Art of the Prompt: How You Can Make Money Selling AI Ideas

by Pier Luigi Pisa

January 20, 2023

All evils have no silver lining: the alternative version of ChatGpt, the result of a simple extension, works well and indeed is the typical example of an interface that can be useful for beginners.

Write a prompt it’s not as simple as it may seem. And applications like AIPRM, in this sense, can really make a difference.