ChatGPT has just kicked off the Generative AI era

ChatGPT is mind-blowing – for want of a better word. Since its launch in November end, this smart chatbot has triggered some vital discussions on what AI as a technology can potentially achieve. 

And, it has already made history. In just about five days after its release by OpenAI, an astounding 1 million users signed up for Chat GPT. Within a span of two months, ChatGPT became the fastest application to hit 100 million users, surpassing the records set by TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. 

“What makes ChatGPT so impressive is its ability to produce human-like responses. Another thing that differentiates ChatGPT is its ability to log context from users’ earlier messages in a thread and use it to form responses later in the conversation. So, this is very different from how computers used to behave before,” wrote Jijy Oommen, Chief Technology Officer & Digital enthusiast in her recent Linkedin post. 

In the revolutionary world of Generative AI

What it also did in the process is to push Generative AI into the broader mainstream discussions. If we borrow Bill Gates’ words, “Generative AI like ChatGPT will change our world!”. 

Generative AI is the branch of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to ‘generate’ new content in the form of text, audio, images or videos. 

By now, we have seen numerous thrilled users across the globe taking to social media to showcase their experiences with this bot. 

While ChatGPT may be the most popular ‘Generative Pre-trained Transformer’, a number of players have already launched similar products in the market – such as Jasper, Anthropic, Bloom, Chinchilla or the new kid on the block – Google’s Bard. 

And yet, we have probably only seen the tip of the iceberg. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella rightly said at the World Economic Forum 2023, ‘the world is entering a golden age of Artificial Intelligence, and AI is just the beginning of the S-curve.’

The global generative AI market size is anticipated to reach USD 109.37 billion by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 34.6%, according to a new report by Grand View Research. 

Investments around generative AI has been soaring. According to Pitchbook, Venture Capitalists have increased investment in Generative AI by 425% since 2020 to $2.1bn. 

Business applications abound 

New business use-cases of this technology are expected to create far-reaching impact across industries. Early foundation models like ChatGPT focus on the ability of generative AI to augment creative work, but by 2025, we expect more than 30% — up from zero today — of new drugs and materials to be systematically discovered using generative AI techniques,” says Brian Burke, Research VP for Technology Innovation at Gartner.

 According to experts, here are a few of the emerging yet sophisticated applications of generative AI for businesses:  

Marketing & social media: From creating personalized content to driving customer experience, generative AI has broad range of use cases within marketing and social media. According to Gartner estimates 30% of outbound marketing messages from large organizations will be synthetically generated, by 2025. Currently, this number is just above 2%.

Product design & development: Smart algorithms have the power to redefine the process of product design and development. This will ensure faster product development and better products. 

Real-time &Data-driven decision making: Generative AI is expected to play a crucial role in decision optimization, by allowing decision makers to leverage huge amounts of real-time data.