By Jim Lundy
The Fevered Race to Add ChatGPT Capabilities to Products – Salesforce Is Just One Example
This week both Google and Microsoft announced ChatGPT-related products. It started with announcements from Google with Bard and Microsoft with their upgrades to Bing and edge browser with ChatGPT functionality coming soon.
However, other enterprises are making noise and announcements about their generative content additions to their product families, including Salesforce’s Twitter announcement yesterday.
This blog is about the generative content race and why engineered demos are not product announcements.
What is ChatGPT?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT falls under the category of generative AI with a conversational interface. This means ChatGPT can have conversations with a human and respond with full-sentence answers.
Because OpenAI was able to go from zero to 100 million users in less than a month, this is a faster ramp rate than even TikTok, which did the same feat over several months. This is the reason why so many other providers are racing to say that they will have a product offering too.
Related Blog: Google Steps into the Chat AI Ring with Bard, Anthropic Investment
Salesforce Tweets about EinsteinGPT – Coming March 7th
A good example of the me-too mentality regarding ChatGPT functionality was a tweet from Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff that EinsteinGPT is coming on March 7th.
That’s all the tweet said. There were no further announcements. Unfortunately, that is what we have now, people making announcements without an actual product other than an engineering demo.
The Race is On for Generative AI – But Enterprises Need to be Careful
What Aragon is observing is a fevered race by enterprises to develop products that have ChatGPT functionality because of the strong reaction by users on social media. There is a belief that adding this functionality will increase demand for their products and services.
However, what we have seen from several vendors over the last two weeks is nothing more than an engineering demo which technically would be called a product preview.
Bottomline – Change is Coming
The bottom line is that change is coming to enterprise software. And it is coming faster than people think. However, not all of the new offerings with ChatGPT-like features are ready for prime time.
There are many issues that enterprises will have to deal with regarding how content is generated. Also, whether the content that is generated is new work or derivative work that might be subject to IP infringement.
That’s why we feel that many of the announcements are just announcements for future products that don’t yet exist.
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This blog on ChatGPT and the Workplace Revolution is a part of the Digital Workplace blog series by Aragon Research’s CEO,
Jim Lundy.
