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ChatGPT 4.0 Is Coming

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ChatGPT 4.0 Is Coming

GPT-4, is said by some to be “next-level” and disruptive, but what will the reality be?

CEO Sam Altman answers questions about the GPT-4 and the future of AI.

Hints that GPT-4 Will Be Multimodal AI?

In a podcast interview (AI for the Next Era) from September 13, 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed the near future of AI technology.

Of particular interest is that he said that a multimodal model was in the near future.

Multimodal means the ability to function in multiple modes, such as text, images, and sounds.

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OpenAI interacts with humans through text inputs. Whether it’s Dall-E or ChatGPT, it’s strictly a textual interaction.

An AI with multimodal capabilities can interact through speech. It can listen to commands and provide information or perform a task.

Altman offered these tantalizing details about what to expect soon:

“I think we’ll get multimodal models in not that much longer, and that’ll open up new things.

I think people are doing amazing work with agents that can use computers to do things for you, use programs and this idea of a language interface where you say a natural language – what you want in this kind of dialogue back and forth.

You can iterate and refine it, and the computer just does it for you.

You see some of this with DALL-E and CoPilot in very early ways.”

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Altman didn’t specifically say that GPT-4 will be multimodal. But he did hint that it was coming within a short time frame.

Of particular interest is that he envisions multimodal AI as a platform for building new business models that aren’t possible today.

He compared multimodal AI to the mobile platform and how that opened opportunities for thousands of new ventures and jobs.

Altman said:

“…I think this is going to be a massive trend, and very large businesses will get built with this as the interface, and more generally [I think] that these very powerful models will be one of the genuine new technological platforms, which we haven’t really had since mobile.

And there’s always an explosion of new companies right after, so that’ll be cool.”

When asked about what the next stage of evolution was for AI, he responded with what he said were features that were a certainty.

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“I think we will get true multimodal models working.

And so not just text and images but every modality you have in one model is able to easily fluidly move between things.”

AI Models That Self-Improve?

Something that isn’t talked about much is that AI researchers want to create an AI that can learn by itself.

This ability goes beyond spontaneously understanding how to do things like translate between languages.

The spontaneous ability to do things is called emergence. It’s when new abilities emerge from increasing the amount of training data.

But an AI that learns by itself is something else entirely that isn’t dependent on how huge the training data is.

What Altman described is an AI that actually learns and self-upgrades its abilities.

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Furthermore, this kind of AI goes beyond the version paradigm that software traditionally follows, where a company releases version 3, version 3.5, and so on.

He envisions an AI model that is trained and then learns on its own, growing by itself into an improved version.

Altman didn’t indicate that GPT-4 will have this capability.

He just put this out there as something that they’re aiming for, apparently something that is within the realm of distinct possibility.

He explained an AI with the ability to self-learn:

“I think we will have models that continuously learn.

So right now, if you use GPT whatever, it’s stuck in the time that it was trained. And the more you use it, it doesn’t get any better and all of that.

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I think we’ll get that changed.

So I’m very excited about all of that.”

It’s unclear if Altman was talking about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but it sort of sounds like it.

Altman recently debunked the idea that OpenAI has an AGI, which is quoted later in this article.

Altman was prompted by the interviewer to explain how all of the ideas he was talking about were actual targets and plausible scenarios and not just opinions of what he’d like OpenAI to do.

The interviewer asked:

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“So one thing I think would be useful to share – because folks don’t realize that you’re actually making these strong predictions from a fairly critical point of view, not just ‘We can take that hill’…”

Altman explained that all of these things he’s talking about are predictions based on research that allows them to set a viable path forward to choose the next big project confidently.

He shared,

“We like to make predictions where we can be on the frontier, understand predictably what the scaling laws look like (or have already done the research) where we can say, ‘All right, this new thing is going to work and make predictions out of that way.’

And that’s how we try to run OpenAI, which is to do the next thing in front of us when we have high confidence and take 10% of the company to just totally go off and explore, which has led to huge wins.”

Can OpenAI Reach New Milestones With GPT-4?

One of the things necessary to drive OpenAI is money and massive amounts of computing resources.

Microsoft has already poured three billion dollars into OpenAI, and according to the New York Times, it is in talks to invest an additional $10 billion.

The New York Times reported that GPT-4 is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2023.

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It was hinted that GPT-4 might have multimodal capabilities, quoting a venture capitalist Matt McIlwain who has knowledge of GPT-4.

The Times reported:

“OpenAI is working on an even more powerful system called GPT-4, which could be released as soon as this quarter, according to Mr. McIlwain and four other people with knowledge of the effort.

…Built using Microsoft’s huge network for computer data centers, the new chatbot could be a system much like ChatGPT that solely generates text. Or it could juggle images as well as text.

Some venture capitalists and Microsoft employees have already seen the service in action.

But OpenAI has not yet determined whether the new system will be released with capabilities involving images.”

The Money Follows OpenAI

While OpenAI hasn’t shared details with the public, it has been sharing details with the venture funding community.

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It is currently in talks that would value the company as high as $29 billion.

That is a remarkable achievement because OpenAI is not currently earning significant revenue, and the current economic climate has forced the valuations of many technology companies to go down.

The Observer reported:

“Venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund are among the investors interested in buying a total of $300 million worth of OpenAI shares, the Journal reported. The deal is structured as a tender offer, with the investors buying shares from existing shareholders, including employees.”

The high valuation of OpenAI can be seen as a validation for the future of the technology, and that future is currently GPT-4.

Sam Altman Answers Questions About GPT-4

Sam Altman was interviewed recently for the StrictlyVC program, where he confirms that OpenAI is working on a video model, which sounds incredible but could also lead to serious negative outcomes.

While the video part was not said to be a component of GPT-4, what was of interest and possibly related, is that Altman was emphatic that OpenAI would not release GPT-4 until they were assured that it was safe.

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The relevant part of the interview occurs at the 4:37 minute mark:

The interviewer asked:

“Can you comment on whether GPT-4 is coming out in the first quarter, first half of the year?”

Sam Altman responded:

“It’ll come out at some point when we are like confident that we can do it safely and responsibly.

I think in general we are going to release technology much more slowly than people would like.

We’re going to sit on it much  longer than people would like.

And eventually people will be like happy with our approach to this.

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But at the time I realized like people want the shiny toy and it’s frustrating and I totally get that.”

Twitter is abuzz with rumors that are difficult to confirm. One unconfirmed rumor is that it will have 100 trillion parameters (compared to GPT-3’s 175 billion parameters).

That rumor was debunked by Sam Altman in the StrictlyVC interview program, where he also said that OpenAI doesn’t have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is the ability to learn anything that a human can.

Altman commented:

“I saw that on Twitter.  It’s complete b——t.

The GPT rumor mill is like a ridiculous thing.

…People are begging to be disappointed and they will be.

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…We don’t have an actual AGI and I think that’s sort of what’s expected of us and you know, yeah… we’re going to disappoint those people. “

Many Rumors, Few Facts

The two facts about GPT-4 that are reliable are that OpenAI has been cryptic about GPT-4 to the point that the public knows virtually nothing, and the other is that OpenAI won’t release a product until it knows it is safe.

So at this point, it is difficult to say with certainty what GPT-4 will look like and what it will be capable of.

But a tweet by technology writer Robert Scoble claims that it will be next-level and a disruption.

Nevertheless, Sam Altman has cautioned not to set expectations too high.

More resources:


Featured Image: salarko/Shutterstock

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


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