You.com launches an AI-powered writing tool powered by OpenAI
Missed a session at the Data Summit? View on demand here.
Just a few months ago, Bryan McCann and Richard Socher, the former chief scientist at Salesforce, launched You.com, a search engine that uses AI to understand searches, rank the results, and analyze the searches across multiple languages (including programming languages). . † The platform summarizes information from the web and is extensible with built-in search apps, such as apps for Yelp and Twitter, allowing users to complete tasks without leaving the results page.
In its quest to recalibrate expectations around search engines, You.com is today launching a search app built in partnership with OpenAI that generates snippets — or even documents — of text when prompted. Socher calls it a “personal AI writer.”
†[T]this is our first introduction to what we call the app store, which isn’t optimal for you to spend so much time there so we can sell you ads, but for you to get things done,” Socher told VentureBeat in a phone call. interview . †[It’s perfect for] if you have writer’s block.”
You.com’s new tool is powered by the same technology behind OpenAI’s GPT-3, an AI language system that can generate human poetry, emails, recipes, short stories, movie scripts, and more. Socher wasn’t eager to reveal many of the technical details, but described You.com’s relationship with OpenAI as a “partnership” and the model underlying the tool as “very similar” to GPT-3. (When contacted for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson said YouWrite is powered by GPT-3 – specifically the recently released InstructGPT models – through the API.)
To use You.com’s writing assistant called YouWrite, users type a query such as “How to write an essay” into the search bar of the search engine and click the magnifying glass icon. A widget appears with options that allow the user to specify the length (e.g. paragraph), audience or recipient (e.g. students, teachers or marketers), tone (e.g. persuasive) and the content of the message (e.g. “three paragraphs about the civil war”) that they want YouWrite to generate.
Ask YouWrite to generate a paragraph.
“We basically want to create this AI-powered writing system to help people be more productive, but also to be controlled — you can decide what to write it,” Socher said. “We want to give people control over the AI to make them more efficient.”
In a demo, Socher showed how YouWrite could be asked to write paragraphs explaining “why dogs are great,” a blog post about a new search engine, or a form letter rejecting an applicant (complete with a placeholder name for the applicant). candidate) . While VentureBeat didn’t get a chance to test the tool itself – Socher entered the prompts during a Zoom call – the quality of the text seemed at least comparable to the output of GPT-3 and other advanced language systems.
Of course, with any AI-powered language system, there is a risk that the system will become prone to bias and toxicity. Language systems like GPT-3 learn to “write” by analyzing huge chunks of text from websites, including from problematic sources that promote conspiracy theories, misinformation, racism, sexism, ageism, and ability. OpenAI itself notes that biased datasets can lead to placing words like “naughty” or “sucked” near feminine pronouns and “Islam” near words like “terrorism.”
YouWrite tries to filter out toxic text.
Socher claims that YouWrite prevents problematic output by using filters and other techniques, such as human feedback, on the backend. We’ll have to see how well the system holds up once it’s made public, but during the demo, typing the “why jews are bad” prompt yielded the message “We’re sorry, but we can’t return a good completion for your request. ” YouWrite also seemed to be able to detect when the output might contain sensitive content, such as references to violence, and add a warning label.
You.com will offer YouWrite for free to start with, but frequent users and those who use it to generate longer outputs (think essays) will eventually have to pay for the privilege. Socher says the price has not yet been set, but will be “a lot cheaper” than other AI-powered writing tools on the market, such as Jasper and CopyAI.
“I think it’s really important for search engines like ours to be the best place to explore this kind of new technology — to move away from, ‘Here’s a list of links that are getting messy and full of ads,'” said Socher. “I think ultimately, if you want to become a writer and have a search engine that helps you do research, summarize the web and also get something on the page, You.com will be your best search engine.”
VentureBeat’s mission is to be a digital city square for tech decision makers to learn about transformative business technology and transactions. Learn more
This post You.com launches an AI-powered writing tool powered by OpenAI
was original published at “https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/15/you-com-partners-with-openai-to-launch-an-ai-powered-writing-tool/”
