From school bans to Sam Altman drama: the big developments in AI in 2023

The past year showcased the hopes and fears around AI as transformative technology went mainstream.

The artificial intelligence (AI) industry began 2023 with a bang as schools and universities struggled with students using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help them with homework and essay writing.

Less than a week into the year, New York City Public Schools banned ChatGPT – released weeks earlier to enormous fanfare – a move that would set the stage for much of the discussion around generative AI in 2023.

As the buzz grew around Microsoft-backed ChatGPT and rivals like Google’s Bard AI, Baidu’s Ernie Chatbot and Meta’s LLaMA, so did questions about how to handle a powerful new technology that had become accessible to the public overnight.

While AI-generated images, music, videos and computer code created by platforms such as Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or OpenAI’s DALL-E opened up exciting new possibilities, they also fuelled concerns about misinformation, targeted harassment and copyright infringement.

In March, a group of more than 1,000 signatories, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, called for a pause in the development of more advanced AI in light of its “profound risks to society and humanity”.