GPT-4 has brought a storm of hype and fright – is it marketing froth, or is this a revolution? | Charlie Beckett

I have seen enough to know that it's going to alter our lives. Just think what AI tools could do when used by creative people in fashion or architecture

The recent flurry, or rather blizzard, of announcements of new variants of generative AI have brought a storm of hype and fright. OpenAI's ChatGPT already appeared to be a gamechanger, but now this week's new version, GPT-4, is another leap ahead. GPT-4 can generate enough text to write a book, code in every computer language, and - most remarkably - understand" images.

If your mind is not boggled by the potential of this, then you haven't been paying attention. I have spent the past five years researching how artificial intelligence has been changing journalism around the world. I've seen how it can supercharge news media to gather, create and distribute content in much more efficient and effective ways. It is already the next wave" of technological change. Now generative AI has moved potential progress up a gear or two.