Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Over the past few months, AI chatbots like ChatGPT have captured the world's attention due to their ability to converse in a human-like way on just about any subject. But they come with a serious drawback: They can present convincing false information easily, making them unreliable sources of factual information and potential sources of defamation .

Why do AI chatbots make things up, and will we ever be able to fully trust their output? We asked several experts and dug into how these AI models work to find the answers.

“Hallucinations”—a loaded term in AI

AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT rely on a type of AI called a "large language model" (LLM) to generate their responses. An LLM is a computer program trained on millions of text sources that can read and generate "natural language" text—language as humans would naturally write or talk. Unfortunately, they can also make mistakes.

Enlarge / A photo of an IBM PC 5155 portable computer running a ChatGPT client written by Yeo Kheng Meng. (credit: Yeo Kheng Meng )

On Sunday, Singapore-based retrocomputing enthusiast Yeo Kheng Meng released a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS that can run on a 4.77 MHz IBM PC from 1981, providing a unique way to converse with the popular OpenAI language model.

Vintage computer development projects come naturally to Yeo, who created a Slack client for Windows 3.1 in 2019. "I thought to try something different this time and develop for an even older platform as a challenge," he writes on his blog. In this case, he turned his attention to MS-DOS , a text-only operating system first released in 1981, and ChatGPT , an AI-powered large language model (LLM) released by OpenAI in November.

As a conversational AI model, ChatGPT draws on knowledge scraped from the Internet to answer questions and generate text. Thanks to an API that launched his month , anyone with the programming chops can interface ChatGPT with their own custom application.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Things are moving at lighting speed in AI Land. On Friday, a software developer named Georgi Gerganov created a tool called "llama.cpp" that can run Meta's new GPT-3-class AI large language model, LLaMA , locally on a Mac laptop. Soon thereafter, people worked out how to run LLaMA on Windows as well. Then someone showed in running on a Pixel 6 phone. Next came a Raspberry Pi (albeit very slowly).

If this keeps up, we may be looking at a pocket-sized ChatGPT competitor before we know it.

But let's back up a minute, because we're not quite there yet. (At least not today—as in literally today, March 13, 2023.) But what will arrive next week, no one knows.

Enlarge (credit: Discord)

Joining a recent parade of companies adopting generative AI technology, Discord announced on Thursday that it is rolling out a suite of AI-powered features, such as a ChatGPT-style chatbot, an upgrade to its moderation tool, an open source avatar remixer, and AI-powered conversation summaries.

Discord's new features come courtesy of technology from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT . Earlier this month, OpenAI announced a new API interface for its popular large language model (LLM) and preferential commercial access called " Foundry ." The ChatGPT API allows companies to easily build AI-powered generative text into their apps, and companies like Snapchat and DuckDuckGo are already getting on the bandwagon with their own implementations of OpenAI's tools.

In this case, Discord is using OpenAI's tech to upgrade its existing robot, called "Clyde." The update, coming next week, will allow Clyde to answer questions, engage in conversations, and recommend playlists. Users will be able to chat with Clyde in any channel by typing "@Clyde" in a server, and the bot will reportedly also be able to start a thread for group chats.