In recent months, a great big experiment has been taking place in Australia.
New models and interfaces of generative artificial intelligence (AI) have been dropped in the midst of the public, with little sense of how they'll be used.
Technology known mostly to developers has become an everyday tool for teachers and retirees, accountants and tradespeople.
We want to hear from you:
How are you using generative AI like ChatGPT in your everyday life?
Knowledge of ChatGPT and its competitors spread by word-of-mouth, through chatter at school pick-ups or in the family WhatsApp. These new users found novel applications, often far from the world of Big Tech corporations that had invented and tested the technology.
A young man in Queensland consulted it for relationship advice. An Adelaide woman asked for a poem to her boyfriend. A Brisbane rideshare driver turned to it for legal advice. An octogenarian man found ways to improve his system for placing bets. A young woman in Melbourne commissioned a love poem to her neighbour's dog — on behalf of her own dog.
This is the story of how a strange new technology percolated through society over the summer of 2022/23.
The punter, the tradie, and a poem for the neighbour's dog
San Francisco-based OpenAI released ChatGPT on the last day of November in 2022, reportedly with little hope for its success.
For the company, the product wasn't that new or exciting. It had been releasing AI models on a roughly annual basis for years. The latest big release, GPT3, was in 2020. ChatGPT was powered by an updated version of that two-year-old technology, called GPT3.5.
But ChatGPT had what the earlier product releases didn't: an easy-to-use chat-based interface.
This proved to be the difference. Within five days, ChatGPT amassed more than one million users. Within two months, the figure was 100 million.
In a small town in south-east Tasmania, Mike McBain, 86, heard about ChatGPT through his daughters and grandchildren.
"They all have very responsible jobs and they're now using it for pleasure and for work," he said.
Mike, too, would use it for work. A "full-time professional punter", he had already developed an enormously complex system for placing bets on the horses and other races.
The system employed spreadsheets, formulae and mini-programs, known as macros, to find patterns across decades of racing data.
Since late last year, Mike has been using ChatGPT to make better macros.
"I've sort of taught myself Excel over 30 years ... and I used online forums for help," Mike said.
"Now ChatGPT does for me in 30 seconds what using an online forum would take me three days."
In Byron Bay, NSW, Nic Durkin heard about ChatGPT through a friend in February.
The manager of a company that does small building works in the coastal town, he asked ChatGPT to write a speech for his team of tradespeople.
"Give me some materials and tools and I'm alright, but ask me to motivate a team ... and I'm lost for words," he said.
ChatGPT wrote a speech about focusing on quality work rather than speed, and he delivered it verbatim to his team, apparently with great success. He didn't tell anyone it was ChatGPT.
"We are tradies, not motivational speakers," he said.
That same month, in Melbourne, Courtney Smith asked ChatGPT to write a Valentine's Day poem for the neighbour's dog, Riky, on behalf of her dog, Cherry.
"My dog is obsessed with next door neighbour's dog," she said.
The AI's first effort was a pretty decent haiku:
Cherry's heart beats fast,
Neighbour's dog howls in delight,
Love barks at the fence.
Its final version was a 20-line opus.
Courtney also turned to ChatGPT to write a resignation letter from her social work university placement.
She was dealing with depression and anxiety, and, as a result of these mental health problems, finding it hard to explain why she had to leave.
"I had ChatGPT read what I wrote and make it more professional-sounding. It made it so much easier to leave the placement.
"I don't think I would have the courage to leave without that assistance and may have come off as a problem student instead."
As students are banned, some teachers use it to write reports
As the technology spread, some institutions tried to ban its use.
Schools and universities were top of this list, concerned that students would use AI to cheat on assignments.
But enforcing this ban was becoming harder. New AI tools were everywhere, embedded within familiar and trusted sites and programs.
In early February, Google launched its ChatGPT rival, named Bard.
A few days later, Microsoft, which has invested in OpenAI, released an AI-powered version of its search engine, Bing.
Meanwhile, other platforms, such as the Chinese internet search engine Baidu, were rolling out their own chatbots.
In March, Microsoft introduced an AI assistant feature for Office documents.
That same month, Notion, which makes a similar type of AI-powered productivity tool, reported having 20 million users.
And not only were AI tools everywhere, within easy reach of students, but teachers were using them too.
Lisa, who teaches at a primary school in Queensland and has asked to remain anonymous, used ChatGPT to speed up the process of writing term one reports.
For each student, she copied into ChatGPT the notes she had kept on the student, and asked the tool to turn the dot points into paragraphs.
"It just had to make the phrases into coherent sentences," she said.
The result was still a personalised report, she argued, but took much less time.
"Report cards normally take 60 hours, with marking and grading. ChatGPT saved about 10 hours."
She also used ChatGPT at parent-teacher interviews by giving it the transcript and asking it to summarise the notes.
"And then I just had to polish it," she said.
"That took 15 minutes as opposed to 30 minutes to an hour."
Timothy, who teaches at a high school in Perth and also asked to remain anonymous, has been secretly using ChatGPT to help assess his students' work.
He submits their anonymised written answers and asks for its assessment. Then he uses its response as part of his feedback to students.
"It's an extra tool that guides and helps me in my practice," he said.
Controversially, Timothy has also advised some of his year 12 ATAR students on how to properly use ChatGPT, although he tells them it won't help them write their exam answers.
"That could get me into big trouble," he said.
The Department of Education WA has banned ChatGPT from all public schools.
"I'm a little bit upset that the Department of Education has banned it because we should be teaching the kids how to use it correctly," Timothy said.
"We're going to use it as a tool because that's the future."
Using ChatGPT to be better in a relationship
The uses of generative AI for boosting productivity and saving time at work are well documented. Law firms use it to summarise mountains of documents, architects to visualise their imagined buildings, and software engineers to do the grunt work of coding.
There's even a new kind of role, "prompt engineer", that specialises in communicating with AI programs.
But as useful as AI can be in the office, it isn't purely software for work.
This is a theme that came through strongly in people's stories about how they're using generative AI in their everyday lives.
A man in his 30s in Melbourne has been using it for cooking recipes, based on what he has in the fridge.
A woman in Victoria, who has a disability, uses it to illustrate children's books.
A retiree in the Blue Mountains near Sydney has been pursuing a hobby for recreating the live performance of long-dead famous pianists, by converting their recordings to highly detailed computer files, which can then be played by an electronic keyboard.
A woman in Queensland used it to write a thank you card for two long-serving employees that were retiring.
A man in Sydney asks it to explain Bible verses.
Our final story to share comes from Jonathan Edmeades in Queensland, who has been using ChatGPT to help with the difficulties of a long-distance relationship.
His girlfriend is in Copenhagen, and so a lot of their communication is by text.
"I'm not great with texting and stuff, I misread things," he said.
"I use it as a friend, like, 'Hey mate, I'm going through this, what do you reckon? Is she right or am I right?'"
Because the relationship is new, he doesn't want to ask his friends these types of questions.
"I don't want to involve them in problems before they've met her."
He also thinks the sort of help he needs doesn't justify seeing a therapist.
"It's a lot like a therapist, like it never takes a side as much as you think you're in the right," he said.
He sometimes tells ChatGPT about a conversation they've had, and asks it whether he misunderstood the meaning or general tone.
Other times he asks ChatGPT to tone-check his messages.
"I want to make sure I'm not coming across as demanding or needy, and I also want to highlight any areas that could be misunderstood."
Asking ChatGPT for relationship advice may strike some as intrusive, a blurring of the categories of the mechanical and the romantic, but it's likely this prejudice will fade.
In just a few months, generative AI has gone from novelty to everyday tool. Millions of people have used it for the first time, and gone back for more.
But what's interesting about Jonathan's story is the way generative AI seems to be more than just a tool.
Yes, it's a machine, but he's treating it like a human confidante and adviser.
And he's doing this to improve his human communication.
He hadn't told his girlfriend about using ChatGPT in this way, but then, ahead of this article being published, he asked her what she thought.
"Yeah, no worries," she replied.
