Issue #18. It’s always both good and bad, isn’t it?

On today’s quest:

— Such clean, free tools. How can it last?
— Copyright lawsuits won’t save you
— Claude decides it should be the star of your content, facts be damned

Useful Tool: Convert Anything

With Custom GPTs launching this week, meaning we’re going to see a flood of new task-specific AI tools. Here’s one example: Convert Anything a tool that converts files to other file types (GPT Plus account required).

Need to convert an MP4 file to an MOV file? A WAV file to an MP3 file. This Custom GPT will do it.

Tools like this already exist, of course. But the ones I know about are either paid software or websites so filled with ads they feel dangerous.* Here, we have a free, quick, and clean alternative.

How will they make money? I’ll be reading more about how the business models for these tools work. I worry about people offering free tools without a business model to support them. Right now, Custom GPTs don’t even seem that useful as branding or lead-generation tools. But if they get a small cut of the ChatGPT Plus subscription you need to use them, maybe they will continue to exist.

What’s coming? I expect the GPT store will have an overwhelming collection of writing and editing tools. It will be hard to know which ones to trust and which are worth your time or money. Round-up posts from people who test and review these tools are likely to be popular.

Thoughts: Copyright lawsuits won’t save you

The Cyber podcast from Vice had a deep dive on the lawsuit the New York Times filed against OpenAI and Microsoft (Spotify, Apple Podcasts). It’s well worth the 40-minute listen to the interview with Sharon Goldman of VentureBeat if you’re interested, but my biggest takeaway is that my original impression was correct: no matter the outcome, this isn’t going to dramatically change the way these tools will affect you and me.

For example, the lawsuit is about U.S. copyright law, so it only affects companies in the United States. Even if OpenAI and Microsoft lose, companies in other countries will keep building AI. Further, years will pass before there’s a final ruling. By that time, AI will likely be deeply embedded in society, and lawmakers could change copyright law to allow things to continue unchanged to “keep American businesses competitive.”

I’m more convinced than ever that these tools aren’t going away.

Plus, the Times itself is starting to use AI. As I was catching up on reading I missed during the holidays, I also came across an interesting story about the Times hiring Zach Seward, a co-founder of Quartz, to guide the company’s use of AI.

According to the Wall Street Journal article (gift link), “The Times has already begun allowing newsroom staff to apply for the opportunity to experiment with AI tools, according to a spokesman. At one meeting in August, around 50 senior newsroom employees discussed ways the paper could use the technology to make existing work more efficient, including generating headline ideas or parsing data.”

Tip: Watch for biases, especially in Claude

Christopher Penn recently made an important and troubling discovery using Claude: It inserted pro-Claude bias into its answers. One of his followers replicated the problem and others said they have noticed similar problems.

Here’s what happened: Chris asked Claude to summarize a transcript for a YouTube description. Although the piece was all about OpenAI — without a word about Claude — Claude decided it should be the star of the summary. As Chris wrote, “Claude intentionally rewrote itself into my summary - and wrote out OpenAI … This, to me, immediately makes Claude less trustworthy.”

It’s another reminder that you have to constantly be on the lookout for hallucinations and biases.

And as always, I highly recommend Chris’ “Almost Timely” newsletter, which has become a great source of in-depth information about AI.

What is AI sidequest?

Using AI isn’t my main job, and it probably isn’t yours either. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and Grammar Girl is my main gig, but I haven’t seen a technology this transformative since the development of the internet, and I want to learn about it. I bet you do too.

So here we are! Sidequesting together.

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^{*  That doesn’t mean free, clean tools don’t exist … just that I don’t know about them. I only need to convert files every couple of months, so I haven’t investigated every option.}

^{Written by a human.}