Artificial intelligence has become a hot topic in the tech industry as of late, sparking a heated debate about its potential consequences and the role it will play in shaping our future as a society. Despite popular belief that AI is still far off from having any noticeable impact on our lives, the truth is that it’s already beginning to permeate our daily routines in subtle but profound ways that we may not even be aware of.
In fact, artificial intelligence is affecting our decisions and lifestyles on a day-to-day basis, whether we realize it or not. If you don’t believe it, you’re in for a surprise. Keep reading and we’ll share with you 18 examples of artificial intelligence that you are likely using in your daily life without even realizing it.
Chatbots
At this point in time, all of us are accustomed to using various chatbots on the Internet. Whether it is something as simple as a customer service bot to one that talks like a human, there are bots of all kinds. However, did you know a lot of the bots you have been using are actually examples of artificial intelligence?
A prominent example of this is ChatGPT. People started out using this chatbot as just another online companion. However, you’ll be surprised to know that, ChatGPT is actually an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. ChatGPT is powered by OpenAI’s large language model (GPT 3). The company has also released a newer model titled GPT-4, an LLM available to Plus users.
The bot has been designed to mimic human-like responses and perform a variety of tasks. While people initially used the chatbot for simple conversations, it quickly turned out that ChatGPT is capable of doing just about anything online.The AI chatbot can write blog posts, generate and debug complex code, weave vivid stories, give recipes, and answer almost any question you would ask it. This lends ChatGPT a lot of power to help with anything. ChatGPT is even getting Internet access soon with OpenAI releasing plugins for it. The next time you go about using ChatGPT or its alternatives, do remember that it is one of the best examples of artificial intelligence in 2023. And if you already use it, check out these cool things you can do with ChatGPT and be amazed.
Microsoft Bing
While Google has always been the go-to search engine for almost everyone, Microsoft has now revamped Bing with artificial intelligence. The new AI Bing has been specially created to give the search engine the power to intelligently give nuanced responses by its AI. However, Bing also benefits from the new Chat mode.
Bing AI’s Chat mode essentially lets any user talk to the search engine and draw up all forms of search results. Like ChatGPT, Bing can answer a wide variety of questions and do a lot of things. Since its release, MS Bing has soared in popularity with the website registering over 100 million daily active users. If you’re already a part of the crowd using MS Bing AI, you might have already tried out this powerful example of artificial intelligence.
Google Duplex and Hold For Me
Are you familiar with the Microsoft search engine, Bing? Many people have always relied on Google as their primary search engine, but Bing has undergone a makeover with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). The new AI Bing has been designed to provide intelligent and nuanced responses to user queries.
Not only that, but the new Chat mode is another feature that sets it apart from other search engines. This mode allows users to communicate with the search engine using natural language to pull up search results. Bing AI can answer a wide variety of questions and perform many different tasks. Impressively, Bing has gained popularity with over 100 million users daily! If you are one of those who have already experienced the power of Bing AI, you’ll be aware of just how useful it is.
In other exciting news, users of Pixel phones in the US can now experience the convenience of artificial intelligence. The new feature, Hold For Me, lets Google Assistant handle calls to toll-free numbers and notifies you when a human is ready to speak with you, freeing up your time for other tasks. All this is a testament to the ever-increasing role of AI in our daily lives.
Smart Compose, Quick Reply, and Grammar Check
If you use Gmail then you might have noticed a feature called Smart Compose. It suggests complete sentences based on the preceding line that you have written. It uses Artificial Intelligence to quickly compose your email drafts with contextual accuracy and correct grammar. I use it quite often and believe me, it’s pretty helpful. There could be no better example of AI making life better and saving time on the other hand. You can use this feature in the Compose window. Whenever you get a smart compose suggestion, just hit the tab key and it will be added to your draft.
There is also Quick Reply, both in Gmail and messaging apps on Android, and this technology is also powered by AI. For example, when I get a message on WhatsApp, some quick replies appear on top of the notification based on the message. You can simply tap on it and the reply will be sent instantly. This is another example of AI making a small difference in how we interact online.
Lastly, we have Grammar Check on Google Docs which is powered by AI. There are countless people who use Google Docs to write stories, articles, and whatnot. And Google leverages its advancement in AI to help users write error-free sentences. The service is enabled by default, but you can manually turn it on from Tools -> Spelling and Grammar. Apart from Google’s service, you have Grammarly and many alternatives that offer AI-based grammar checks.
Google Recorder, Live Captions, and Transcribe
One of the best uses of AI is happening in speech detection. Google Recorder, Otter.ai are some of the best examples which are leveraging AI to transcribe speeches in real-time. In fact, Google Recorder goes one step further and uses Machine Learning (which is a subset of AI) to transcribe speeches without internet connectivity. Everything happens offline and with pinpoint accuracy. Not to mention, it also creates a searchable note so you can easily edit the transcription on the go.
Besides that, Google has also brought Live Caption on Android and Chrome browsers. It can listen to internal audio and offer live captioning in real-time. All of this is possible because of AI. Note that, currently, Live Captions only supports English. Then there is the Live Transcribe app by Google which transcribes speeches in over 80 languages and in real time. That’s absolutely great, right? Not to mention, it can detect surrounding sounds such as fire alarms or doorbell ringing which can help people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Google Lens and OCR
Google Lens is another Google service that is built on AI and has some great technology for fast and accurate optical recognition. It allows you to search for anything through images. Just point the camera to a shoe or a plant or an animal or a text, and it can detect the type of subject and will provide precise information on that thing in just a few seconds. All of this is possible because of AI’s advancement in the field of optical recognition.
Not to mention, Google Lens can also do OCR and you can extract texts from images easily. In fact, almost all the OCR software libraries like Tesseract or TensorFlow are built on AI to detect the characters on an image. When you use apps like Adobe Scan or Microsoft Office Lens, smart cropping and edge detection are actually powered by AI. So nonchalantly, you are actively using AI in your daily life and benefit from it.
Fall Detection and Car Crash Detection
Newer Apple Watches come with a Fall Detection feature that alerts the nearby emergency team when it senses you had a hard fall. It uses data from the accelerometer and gyroscope to sense the fall and leverages AI algorithms to accurately sense a hard fall. You may not know it, but due to AI, so many lives are being saved.
Similarly, Google and Apple iPhones now come with Car Crash Detection which is trained on Machine Learning models of real-life car crashes. If the phone senses a car crash, it sends the location to your chosen contacts and also sends an alert to the response team. It’s safe to say that from software utilities to life-saving features, all of them are now powered by AI that we use in our daily life.
Social Media Feeds, Amazon, and Netflix Recommendations
Social media has become an integral part of our lives, and it is almost impossible to avoid its influence. Even if you consciously decide to abstain from social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, you cannot completely escape their reach.
These social media sites are driven by sophisticated algorithms that increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI). It is no surprise then that AI has permeated into our everyday lives to an astounding degree. When we look at social media’s insidious influence, we realize that it can manipulate our choices and decisions.
Whether it is tailoring our newsfeeds, shaping our opinions, or influencing our purchases, AI plays a significant role in how social media operates. Therefore, our online behaviors are increasingly being determined by intelligent algorithms that are hard at work in the background, making decisions that go unnoticed by many.
From the feeds that you see in your timeline to the notifications that you receive from these apps, everything is curated by AI. It does this through complex algorithms that is takes all your past behavior, web searches, interactions, video watches, and more as sample data. It then uses all this to tailor the experience just for you. The sole purpose of AI here is to make the apps so addictive that you come back to them time and time again. As we have already seen, AI in social media is definitely winning this battle.
Not to mention, the recommendations you see on Amazon after adding a product to the cart or based on your browsing history, of them are curated based on AI. Even Netflix recommendations are smartly curated using AI to show you movies and shows that are tuned to your preferences.
Google Assistant and Camera
Long before we started using ChatGPT or Bing, we already had AI in our hands. If you regularly use a smartphone, you are interacting with AI whether you know it or not. From using built-in smart assistants to features like portrait mode in phone cameras, AI is impacting our lives every day.
In fact, the two examples that I provided above give us a glimpse into the world of AI and how it is affecting our lives. Firstly, there are obvious AI elements that most of us have some knowledge about. For example, when you are using a smart assistant, whether it’s Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, or Bixby, you more or less know that these assistants are based on AI. However, when we are using a feature such as portrait mode while shooting a picture, we never consider that AI might be behind that too. Have you ever thought about how Google Pixel phones or iPhones can capture such great portrait shots? The answer is artificial intelligence.
Now more and more manufacturers are including AI in their smartphones with big chip manufacturers including Qualcomm and Huawei producing chips with built-in AI capabilities. The AI integration is helping in bringing features like scene detection, mixed and virtual reality elements, and more. AI is going to play an even major role in the coming years. We are already seeing a huge emphasis on AI with the latest Android and iOS updates.
AI Image Generators
After reading the above, you must already be aware of the power of AI when it comes to visual media. While features like OCR scanning can intelligently convert real word objects to text, AI integration in portrait mode helps frame better pictures. However, did you know that you can actually generate full-fledged images through AI in 2023? The advent of AI has actually resulted in image creation being very easy. Users still need imagination but now it’s to come up with prompts for AI image generators. These generators use a combination of AI technologies to intelligently create a wide variety of images.
As mentioned, the generators only require prompts and hence are limited by our own imagination. AI image generators like Midjourney are amazingly excellent at coming up with vivid and beautiful images. As you can see above, these AI-created images are on par and in some cases surpass images created by artists. If the same trend continues, expect AI to one day rival the creative industry. However, until that happens there are a lot of these generators around.
Autonomous Vehicles
Talking about AI, there is no better and more prominent display of this technology than what smart car manufacturers are doing with it. Just a few years back, using a fully automatic car was a dream, however, now companies like Tesla have made so much progress that we already have a fleet of semi-automatic cars on the road.
Tesla cars are a prime example of how AI is impacting our daily life. Did you know that all the Tesla cars are interconnected and the things that your car learns are shared across all the cars? This means, if you had to take an unanticipated hard left on a cross-road, all the Tesla cars will know how to maneuver that turn after they are updated. There are already more than 500,000 Tesla cars running in the US alone and that number is set to increase exponentially now that Tesla has solved its major production problems. With autonomous cars running on our roads and autonomous drones flying above us, you won’t be able to deny the impact of AI on our lives.
Music and Media Streaming Services
Another great example of how AI impacts our lives are the music and media streaming services like Netflix that we are using on a daily basis. Whether you are using Spotify or YouTube, AI is making the decisions for you. You might feel that you are in total control but you are not. A good example of this is the Discover Weekly playlist. Spotify uses AI and ML to intelligently add new artists and songs to our playlists.
Newer AI-centric features like Enhance on the other hand add songs with the same vibe to the playlist you’ve created. Guess how it works? Yes, AI. Youtube sits on the same branch, with its recommendations. By studying all your data and behavior, the streaming service knows exactly what you watch. So, next time you are hitting play on a recommended video on YouTube or watching a recommended show on Netflix, or listening to a pre-created playlist on Spotify, or any other media and music streaming service for that matter, remember that AI is playing a big role in that.
Video Games
The video game industry is probably one of the earliest adopters of AI. The integration started very small with the use of AI to generate random levels that people can play. However, that has increased to a level that goes far beyond what one can even imagine.
On the large scale, we have observed OpenAI 5, developed by the company OpenAI which is being backed by Elon Musk, beating pro-level Dota 2 players in one on one matches while also beating amateur Dota 2 teams. This achievement is being hailed as a leapfrogging moment in the AI industry. Dota 2 is a strategy-based game where players have to make decisions every second, and beating pro players in such a dynamic game is a huge achievement for AI.
However, besides this, video games have had an AI element to them for quite some time. When you are playing a game such as Call of Duty or Fortnite, you essentially start against a couple of AI-powered bots and then move to play against real players. Even when you are playing a single-person story mode game, you are playing against AI bosses.
If you are playing racing games, you are racing against AI bots. Probably the most interesting use of AI we have seen in games is in the Middle Earth series of games where your enemies which are controlled by AI evolve based on their interaction with you and other gaming elements. I can go on and on about the use of AI in games, but that would make this article very long. Just know that if you play any game, you are using AI.
Navigation and Travel
Another great example where AI daily affects us is the navigation and travel industry. From our daily commutes to our big trips, AI is everywhere. Do you know that whether you are using Google or Apple Maps for navigating, calling an Uber, or booking a flight ticket, you are using AI?
Well, if you didn’t know that before, it’s time that you open your eyes. Both Google and Apple along with other navigation services use artificial intelligence to interpret hundreds of thousands of data points that they receive to give you real-time traffic data. When you are calling an Uber, both the pricing and the car that matches your ride request are decided by AI. As you can see, AI plays a significant role in how we reach point A to point B.
Artificial Intelligence: The Present and the Future
As you can see, all of our lives are impacted by artificial intelligence on a daily basis. Whether we are using our smartphones, surfing the internet, buying products online, using navigation, wasting time on social media, or listening to songs on our favorite music streaming service, AI is impacting our choices in one way or another. So what do you think about AI’s role in our lives? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!