WHO

Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI

WHEN

Now

When OpenAI launched a free web app called ChatGPT in November 2022, no one knew what was coming. But that low-key release modified all the pieces.

By January, ChatGPT had turn out to be the fastest-growing web app ever, offering anyone with a browser access to one of the powerful neural networks ever built. We were dazzled and disturbed.  

And that was only the beginning. In February, Microsoft and Google revealed rival plans to mix chatbots with search—plans that reimagined our every day interactions with the web.  

Early demos weren’t great. Microsoft’s Bing Chat went off the rails, quick to churn out nonsense. Google’s Bard was caught making a factual error in its promo pitch. However the genie wasn’t going back in its bottle, regardless of how weird it was. 

Microsoft and Google have since moved beyond search to place chatbot-based assistants into the hands of billions of individuals via their office software. The tech guarantees to summarize emails and meetings; draft reports and replies; generate whole slide decks—titles, bullet points, and pictures—in seconds.

Microsoft and Meta released image-making models that allow users generate shareable images of anything with a click. Cue a nonstop stream of zany mash-ups—and dozens of posts about Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants flying a plane into the Twin Towers.

Google’s recent phones now use AI to allow you to edit photos to a level never seen before, exchanging sad faces for pleased ones and overcast afternoons for perfect sunsets.

Never has such radical recent technology gone from experimental prototype to consumer product so fast and at such scale. What’s clear is that we haven’t even begun to make sense of all of it, let alone reckon with its impact.

Is the shine coming off? Possibly. With each release, the astonishing becomes more mundane. But 2023’s legacy is evident: billions have now looked AI within the face. Now we’d like to work out exactly what’s looking back.