OpenAI Just Released an Even Scarier Fake News-Writing Algorithm

The company still has a stronger version of the AI under wraps.
Chris Young

OpenAI, the AI company that Elon Musk founded and then quit, has just released a more powerful version of its AI text-writing software.

The company still won't release their full software - that can be used to write fake news and messages en masse - due to fears it might be misused.

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What does OpenAI do?

OpenAI says its text-writing system is so advanced it can write news stories and even fiction that passes as human.

A user can feed the system text - anything from a few sentences to pages of itand the system will then continue that same text in an uncannily well-written, contextually relevant, human style.

However, after releasing its original system, GPT-2, in February, the company said the full software was too dangerous to release to the public - a weaker version was made available.

Now, the company has announced it has released a version of GPT-2 that is six times more powerful.

You can actually try the latest public OpenAI system at TalkToTransformer.com. The results can be eerily realistic - though there are obvious flaws in the writing.

OpenAI is still being careful

According to OpenAI’s statement, there’s still an even more powerful version of GPT-2 that the company hasn't yet revealed.

The company says that it plans to release the more powerful model within a few months, but that it may not if it determines that people are using the new, stronger GPT-2 maliciously.

At the time of the original announcement of GPT-2's release in February, Jack Clarke, OpenAI’s head of policy, told The Guardian there are “many people who are better than us at thinking what [the AI] can do maliciously.”

It could be used, for example, to generate infinite fake positive, or negative, reviews – as if written by a real person.

A cure for fake news?

While OpenAI brings us closer to AI world domination, a group of Harvard and MIT researchers has been developing a method to use AI to fight AI.

The researchers developed a system, dubbed GLTR, that uses an algorithm to track the likelihood that a passageway was written by AI or not.

It will be interesting to see if GLTR ever comes up against GPT-2's strongest version - if it's ever released to the public, that is. The AI wars may be upon us.

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