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OpenAIjust announced a few updatesto its flagship conversational AI theoretical account , ChatGPT , and among them is a new app and interface , starring the system ’s new drug user - facing personality : a giant black dot .
Onstage at the OpenAI Spring Event , CTO Mira Murati alluded to the changes : “ We know that these exemplar get more and more complex , but we want the experience of interaction to actually become more natural , easy , and for you not to focus on the UI at all . ”
To that destruction , the young port is a dot , or hole , or circle — however you pick out to comprehend it .
In one sense it is a positive and critical modification , a nod to the minimalism Apple once embraced . And although the bubbly , saccharine voice is another troubling steptoward pseudanthropy , at least there is n’t an uncanny side to go with it .
The black dot changes into a conventionalised waveform when ChatGPT is mouth , just as the prompt area become into one when the user verbalize . It subtly reinforce the theme of conversation and collaboration , disguising the machinery within . Wisely , they opt not to have the acid turn into a jumbo eye that watches you when you are using its telecasting analysis capabilities . rather , it shows a bouncy view of what it “ sees . ”
In another sense , you are belike not alone in what that forget me drug in a rectangle reminds you of :
Obviously OpenAI is not the first by a farseeing shot to embrace this theme in AI . Apple ’s Siri has long been round , as isMeta ’s eponymous AI . So allow ’s not read too far into it . ( For the disk , Google pick a sparkle for Gemini and Anthropic ’s Claude remain disembodied . )
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But the stark geometrical esthetic has been taken to an extreme point here , a combining of shapes that , like it or not , will always be associated with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke ’s cannily overbearing AI . ( When ChatGPT can learn lips , then we will have it away we ’re in for it . )
One could also think of the dot like a block fix for media and noesis : all the world ’s imagery and text compressed into a crack - dense formal from which no selective information about its training data can escape ( except in court filings ) .
Jokes and over - analyzing aside , the decision to go black and white was probably a saucy one , look at the confect - colored alternatives that seem to want to daze and comfort you . A black dot is neutral and various — adding fresh capabilities and iconography to indicate its activity is simple , and it ’s easily recognizable . Apart from the unavoidably menacing connotation of a goggle black cakehole , it ’s a good brand move .
You ’ll see the raw acid interface in the background and fluid apps soon , though the web port does n’t appear to use it just yet .
We ’re launch an AI newssheet ! Sign uphereto commencement get it in your inboxes on June 5 .
