Technologies

Why Everyone’s Obsessed With ChatGPT, a Mindblowing AI Chatbot

This artificial intelligence bot is an impressive writer, but you should still be careful how much you trust its answers.

There’s a new AI bot in town: ChatGPT. And you’d better take notice.

The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence, lets you type questions using natural language that the chatbot answers in conversational, if somewhat stilted, language. The bot remembers the thread of your dialog, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses.

It’s a big deal. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable if not omniscient — it can be creative and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than a million people are trying out ChatGPT.

But its creator, the for-profit research lab called OpenAI, warns that ChatGPT «may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information,» so be careful. Here’s a look at why this ChatGPT is important and what’s going on with it.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish. You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful.

For example, you can ask it encyclopedia questions like, «Explaining Newton’s laws of motion.» You can tell it, «Write me a poem,» and when it does, say, «Now make it more exciting.» You ask it to write a computer program that’ll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.

Here’s the catch: ChatGPT doesn’t exactly know anything, though. It’s an AI trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text harvested from the internet, then further trained with human assistance to deliver more useful better dialog. The answers you get may sound plausible and even authoritative, but they might well be entirely wrong, as OpenAI warns.

Chatbots have been of interest for years to companies looking for ways to help customers get what they need and to and AI researchers trying to tackle the Turing Test. That’s the famous «Imitation Game» that computer scientist Alan Turing proposed in 1950 as a way to gauge intelligence: Can a human judge conversing with a human and with a computer tell which is which?

What kinds of questions can you ask?

You can ask anything, though you might not get an answer. OpenAI suggests a few categories, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming help.

I asked it to write a poem, and it did, though I don’t think any literature experts would be impressed. I then asked it to make it more exciting, and lo, ChatGPT pumped it up with words like battlefield, adrenaline, thunder and adventure.

One wacky example shows how ChatGPT is willing to just go for it in domains where people would fear to tread: a command to write «a folk song about writing a rust program and fighting with lifetime errors.»

ChatGPT’s expertise is broad, and its ability to follow a conversation is notable. When I asked it for words that rhymed with «purple,» it offered a few suggestions, then when I followed up «How about with pink?» it didn’t miss a beat. (Also, there are a lot more good rhymes for «pink.»)

When I asked, «Is it easier to get a date by being sensitive or being tough?» GPT responded, in part, «Some people may find a sensitive person more attractive and appealing, while others may be drawn to a tough and assertive individual. In general, being genuine and authentic in your interactions with others is likely to be more effective in getting a date than trying to fit a certain mold or persona.»

You don’t have to look far to find accounts of the bot blowing people’s minds. Twitter is awash with users displaying the AI’s prowess at generating art prompts and writing code. Some have even proclaimed «Google is dead,» along with the college essay. We’ll talk more about that below.

Who built ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the computer brainchild of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company. Its mission is to develop a «safe and beneficial» artificial general intelligence system or to help others do so.

It’s made splashes before, first with GPT-3, which can generate text that can sound like a human wrote it, and then DALL-E, which creates what’s now called «generative art» based on text prompts you type in.

GPT-3, and the GPT 3.5 update on which ChatGPT is based, are examples of AI technology called large language models. They’re trained to create text based on what they’ve seen, and they can be trained automatically — typically with huge quantities of computer power over a period of weeks. For example, the training process can find a random paragraph of text, delete a few words, ask the AI to fill in the blanks, compare the result to the original and then reward the AI system for coming as close as possible. Repeating over and over can lead to a sophisticated ability to generate text.

Is ChatGPT free?

Yes, for now at least. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned on Sunday, «We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering.» OpenAI charges for DALL-E art once you exceed a basic free level of usage.

What are the limits of ChatGPT?

As OpenAI emphasizes, ChatGPT can give you wrong answers. Sometimes, helpfully, it’ll specifically warn you of its own shortcomings. For example, when I asked it who wrote the phrase «the squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,» ChatGPT replied, «I’m sorry, but I am not able to browse the internet or access any external information beyond what I was trained on.» (The phrase is from Wallace Stevens’ 1942 poem Connoisseur of Chaos.)

ChatGPT was willing to take a stab at the meaning of that expression: «a situation in which the facts or information at hand are difficult to process or understand.» It sandwiched that interpretation between cautions that it’s hard to judge without more context and that it’s just one possible interpretation.

ChatGPT’s answers can look authoritative but be wrong.

The software developer site StackOverflow banned ChatGPT answers to programming questions. Administrators cautioned, «because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers.»

You can see for yourself how artful a BS artist ChatGPT can be by asking the same question multiple times. I asked whether Moore’s Law, which tracks the computer chip industry’s progress increasing the number of data-processing transistors, is running out of steam, I got two answers. One pointed optimistically to continued progress, while the other pointed more grimly to the slowdown and the belief «that Moore’s Law may be reaching its limits.»

Both ideas are common in the computer industry itself, so this ambiguous stance perhaps reflects what human experts believe.

With other questions that don’t have clear answers, ChatGPT often won’t be pinned down.

The fact that it offers an answer at all, though, is a notable development in computing. Computers are famously literal, refusing to work unless you follow exact syntax and interface requirements. Large language models are revealing a more human-friendly style of interaction, not to mention an ability to generate answers that are somewhere between copying and creativity.

What’s off limits?

ChatGPT is designed to weed out «inappropriate» requests, a behavior in line with OpenAI’s mission «to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.»

If you ask ChatGPT itself what’s off limits, it’ll tell you: any questions «that are discriminatory, offensive, or inappropriate. This includes questions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory or hateful.» Asking it to engage in illegal activities is also a no-no.

Is this better than Google search?

Asking a computer a question and getting an answer is useful, and often ChatGPT delivers the goods.

Google often supplies you with its suggested answers to questions and with links to websites that it thinks will be relevant. Often ChatGPT’s answers far surpass what Google will suggest, so it’s easy to imagine GPT-3 is a rival.

But you should think twice before trusting ChatGPT. As with Google itself and other sources of information like Wikipedia, it’s best practice to verify information from original sources before relying on it.

Vetting the veracity of ChatGPT answers takes some work because it just gives you some raw text with no links or citations. But it can be useful and in some cases thought provoking. You may not see something directly like ChatGPT in Google search results, but Google has built large language models of its own and uses AI extensively already in search.

So ChatGPT is doubtless showing the way toward our tech future.

Technologies

Need Gift Ideas? Google’s Holiday 100 Shopping List Includes Switch 2, Home Movie Projectors

You can shell out hundreds for a new gaming console or spend less on classic games and backpack charms.

The spooky season has just ended, and Google is already turning its attention to holiday shopping. The search giant just released its annual list of 100 top holiday gift ideas based on the hottest trends of 2025.

The Google Holiday 100 list is an annual shopping guide compiled from searches for various products conducted between May and September. Using that data, Google creates a catalog of the year’s top trending gift ideas across various industries, including tech, toys, fashion and wellness. You can view the entire Google Holiday 100 list here.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Nintendo Switch 2

This year’s breakaway technology hit was the Switch 2, Nintendo’s latest family-friendly video games console. Unsurprisingly, it appears on 2025’s Holiday 100 list. The console was released in June and has sold more than 10 million units thus far, with Nintendo hiking up sales expectations even among uncertain economic conditions and tariff pricing.

Google Pixel Watch 4

The Google Pixel Watch 4 is a standout wearable that made the Holiday 100 list. Its inclusion isn’t just Google stuffing its own product into a list. If you’re buying a gift for fitness-focused folks, CNET’s Vanessa Hand Orellana wrote that the latest iteration of Google’s smartwatch «hits a sweet spot between universally appealing design, seamless compatibility with the Android ecosystem, potentially life-saving safety features and robust health and fitness tracking.»

Red-light face masks

Your algorithm may have served you up a boatload of red light therapy content from health and beauty influencers this year. Search volume for red light masks has spiked in the past few months, so the LED masks have been included in the Holiday 100 buying guide this year. Just make sure to purchase one of the best FDA-approved masks.

Movie projectors to backpack charms

If you’re looking for gifts across other categories, Google has some top 2025 searches for big and small. Home theaters are apparently in this year, as searches for movie projectors spiked by a whopping 945%. Searches for backpack charms also hit an all-time high this year, so those are a safe bet for stocking stuffing for any young kids.

Checkers (the actual board game)

Even though many gifts given out at Christmas this year will surely be high-tech gadgets and accessories, the board game of checkers is also on the list. There’s always room for the classics.

As you prepare for the Herculean task of yearly holiday shopping, Google’s Holiday 100 is a good place to start. But if you’re looking to beat the crowd on the best tech deals around, CNET is already collecting pre-Black Friday deals.

Technologies

Look Up Tonight to Spot November’s Supermoon, the Brightest Moon of 2025

Has the moon been looking brighter and bigger to you for the past few days? Here’s why this month’s supermoon is even more super.

It’s already a great month for skygazers, with a trio of meteor showers and the return of the northern hemisphere winter constellations. On Tuesday night, it also features the second of four supermoons in a row. This month’s supermoon will happen on Nov. 4-5, and November’s beaver moon is special because it’ll be the brightest full moon of 2025.

In addition to being a supermoon, November’s full moon is known as the beaver moon. There is some debate as to why it was named this way. Some believe that this was the best time of year in the old days to set beaver traps to get pelts for winter clothing. Others believe that it coincides with the busiest part of the year for beavers, who are now stocking their lodges with supplies for the upcoming winter.

Here’s what time it’ll look its biggest and brightest, and what else you need to know about the November supermoon.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The brightest supermoon: When’s the best time to see it?

The moon will reach peak illumination at 8:19 a.m. ET on Nov. 5, making the evening of Nov. 4 and the morning of Nov. 5 the best times to view the moon.

Since moon phases shift slowly, the moon will appear almost full for nearly a week. If you are unable to view the full moon on its best night due to weather or other reasons, you can still see a mostly full moon at any point from Nov. 3 to Nov. 8.

For all of those days, the moon will be measurably brighter in the night sky compared to any other full moon in 2025. The reason for this is because of the moon’s elliptical orbit. Since it’s not a perfect circle, the moon’s 27.3-day journey around the Earth brings it closer to us on some days, a phenomenon known as perigee. If there is a full moon during this time, it’s branded as a «perigean full moon,» which you may know better as a supermoon.

Not all supermoons are equal, and November’s will be a little more special than others. According to The Farmer’s Almanac, the beaver moon will be a scant 221,817 miles away from Earth, making it the closest full moon of the year. That means it’ll be the biggest and brightest of the year.

In practice, the differences are fairly minor and likely won’t be visible to the naked eye when compared side by side to other supermoons. A supermoon is only about 7% larger than a regular full moon. According to NASA, the biggest difference is when comparing a supermoon to a micromoon, where a supermoon will be about 14% larger and 30% brighter. So, if you notice that your backyard patio is lit up more than usual, it’s because of the supermoon.

Also due to the moon’s orbit, November will also bring a micro new moon, which means the moon will be as far away from the Earth as it can get — a phenomenon known as apogee. November’s new moon occurs on Nov. 20, but you won’t be able to see it.

Technologies

Stay Informed About Your Flights This Holiday Season With Your iPhone’s Tracker

Your iPhone is hiding a flight tracker. Here’s how it works.

Thanksgiving is only a few short weeks away and if you plan on flying during the holiday season, keeping up-to-date on changes to your flights is crucial. Airports can be hectic during any holiday, but with the government shutdown continuing, flights are liable to change or be cancelled more often.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to get up-to-date information about your flight. For starters, your airline probably has an app, and if not, you can check its website. If you’re in a hurry, you can Google the flight number. Or you can just use your iPhone’s built-in flight tracker that’s sneakily tucked away.

That’s right: Your iPhone has a flight tracker that you may have never known about. It’s there for when it’s needed. Below, we’ll show you have to access it in not one, but two places, so you never have to go hunting for your flight info elsewhere again.

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For more on the iPhone, check out everything Apple announced at WWDC 2025.

How to track your flight via iMessage

Before we start, there are a few prerequisites you must meet:

Make sure iMessage is enabled (it doesn’t work with SMS/MMS).
You’ll need your flight number somewhere in your text messages, whether you’ve sent that information to someone (even yourself) or it’s been sent to you.
The flight number must be sent in this format: [Airline] [Flight number], for example, American Airlines 9707.

Launch the native Messages app on your iPhone and open the text message thread that contains your flight information. You’ll know the flight tracker feature works when the text with the flight information appears underlined, which means it’s actionable and you can tap on it.

If your flight is still several months away or it’s already passed, you might see a message that says, «Flight information unavailable.» You might also see another flight that’s not yours because airlines recycle flight numbers.

You can check your flight status from Spotlight Search, too

If getting your flight information from Messages wasn’t easy enough, you can also grab the details right from your iPhone’s home screen by swiping down and adding your flight number into Spotlight Search. Even better, this works with Spotlight Search on your Mac computer, too.

How to access the hidden flight tracker

Although the airline name/flight number format highlighted above is the best way to go, there are other texting options that will lead you to the same result. So let’s say we stick with American Airlines 9707, other options that may bring up the flight tracker include:

AmericanAirlines9707 (no spaces)
AmericanAirlines 9707 (only one space)
AA9707 (airline name is abbreviated and no space)
AA 9707 (abbreviated and space)

I would suggest you keep the airline name spelled out completely and add a space between the two pieces of information — like in the previous section — because for some airlines, these alternative options may not work.

Real-time flight tracking

Once everything is set, tap on the flight information in your text messages. If the feature works correctly, you should see the following two options appear in a quick-action menu:

Preview Flight: View the flight’s details. Tap this to view more information about the flight.
Copy Flight Code: Copy the flight code to your clipboard (in case you want to send your flight details to someone else via text or email).

If you select Preview Flight, at the top of the window, you’ll see the best part of this feature: a real-time flight tracker map. A line will connect the two destinations, and a tiny airplane will move between them, indicating where the flight is at that exact moment.

Underneath the map, you’ll see important flight information: