ChatGPT: One Year in Companies

This article was last updated on November 30, 2023

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…It’s hard to imagine, but the advanced text generator ChatGPT was put online a year ago today as a ‘small research project’ by OpenAI. It happened so quietly that not everyone internally knew about it. How different it is now.

It doesn’t happen often that technology has such an impact on society in such a short time. According to research by Deloitte About one in three Dutch people sometimes use a generative AI tool such as ChatGPT. From education to the media world and business. They have all had to deal with it.

Companies Engaged, but Reluctant

Before the summer, that was already apparent from the business community is busy experimenting with applications such as ChatGPT. A survey by the NOS now shows that large Dutch companies – ABN Amro, ASR, Heineken, ING, KPN, Nationale Nederlanden, Philips and Randstad – are still working on this. This also applies to the former Dutch multinationals Shell and Unilever. One is further along than the other.

Persevere or Wait

A tipping point has now been reached, says Roy Ikink, who heads the technology department of consultancy firm Accenture in the Netherlands. “Companies are at the point where they know what is possible and what the approximate limits are. The question they now face is: do I dare to scale up, or do I wait another year?”

Many companies do not use ChatGPT directly, but do use the technology behind it via Microsoft. When asked, the software giant states that it does not want to provide precise numbers of users in the Netherlands, and estimates hundreds of customers in the Netherlands and more than 18,000 worldwide.

Goal: a Smart Chatbot

Generative AI is used, among other things, in edge service. This happens, for example, at ABN Amro and insurance company Nationale Nederlanden. An AI system listens in when an employee is having a customer conversation and proposes a summary. This saves time and allows employees to focus purely on the conversation, says Tjerrie Smit, head of AI at NN Group. Seven call centers already work with this at their Nationale Nederlanden brand.

As far as he is concerned, this is only the first step. “Ultimately, I want a chatbot that answers your question immediately. So that the chatbot takes care of it immediately when you ask where on our site you can find how to report a move.” But, Smit emphasizes, that is not the case yet.

Challenges While Utilizing ChatGPT

“With ChatGPT we were introduced to a chatbot that can answer all questions, that can let you do everything. People now expect a chatbot from a company to be able to do that too.” But, he says, companies can’t take the risk that ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, is now taking: that mistakes will be made. In the meantime, NN Group is testing a kind of ‘super’ Wikipedia. In fact, a knowledge base where you can ask anything. More companies are doing this. “As soon as we see that there are no more errors, we will eventually make it available to our customers.”

Don’t Create Marketing Materials with AI

Heineken is testing summarizing large amounts of documents. Employees can also ask questions to an internal chatbot and AI is used to bundle customer feedback. Heineken could also have marketing material, such as posters, generated by AI. But the company consciously does not do that, says Surajeet Ghosh, head of analytics at Heineken. “The biggest risk is that we could be accused of plagiarism because it comes from a copyrighted image and we don’t know it,” he says. “So it is very risky to create new content.”

Although OpenAI has already taken a big step forward with consumer versions of ChatGPT, companies are clearly more cautious. After all, there is a lot at stake for them. In any case, they will rely heavily on Microsoft. The company has been a major supplier to the business community for its well-known office programs for many years. Communication platform Teams was added during corona. Now the tech giant is about to become even more indispensable – and therefore more powerful.