Yahoo News Google’s Bard Expands Chatbot Access to Teens as ChatGPT Usage Surges
Usage of AI chatbots appears to be increasing, as Google’s AI chatbot, Bard, will be available to teens in most countries starting Thursday, and ChatGPT was forced to temporarily pause new signups due to demand.
In a blog post Wednesday, Google outlined the potential uses among teens, highlighting prompts such as how to write a class president speech and science fair project ideas. Bard will also allow teens to type or upload a math equation and then provide step-by-step instructions on how to solve it.
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The tech giant says it has also consulted with child safety and development experts on the usage of the chatbot among teens, who are available to use it as young as age 13 in the U.S. Among the safeguards, Bard will introduce a “double-check” feature that verifies answers with content across the internet, as well as safety features that prevent illegal or unsafe content from appearing in the answers.
Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X this week that the company is temporarily pausing new signups for ChatGPT after hosting its first developer conference earlier this month. At the conference, the company introduced a number of initiatives, including previewing a more advanced large language model that is slated to launch in the next few weeks.
“[We] are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁 the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience. you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen,” Altman wrote Tuesday.
While chatbots are expanding their user bases, they continue to be a hot-button issue within the Hollywood industry. One of the sticking points during the writer’s strike was in negotiating safeguards around studios using AI to write scripts and in using human writers scripts to train chatbots.
In the end, the Writers Guild of America and the studios agreed to a deal in which the use of AI is not barred, but that says work created by AI must be disclosed by both sides and won’t affect writers’ credit or compensation. However, there is also language built in that signal studios are looking for writers to work collaboratively with AI tools, such as chatbots.
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