An AI writing assistance with source citations is unveiled by AI21 Labs

The artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT, which can create spreadsheet formulas, emails, poems, and more, has recently received a lot of unfavorable press. Users were briefly prohibited from publishing ChatGPT-generated content by Stack Overflow, which claimed that the AI made it too simple for users to flood the site with bogus responses. Then, due to concerns about cheating and false information, New York City public schools forbade students and teachers from using ChatGPT on school-owned devices.

That’s possibly why AI21 Labs, an Israeli business creating ChatGPT-like text-generating AI systems, took a different approach with its recently announced Wordtune Spices aided writing product. Wordtune Spices, a component of AI21’s growing collection of generative AI, doesn’t create emails and essays like ChatGPT. Instead, it offers alternatives that alter the tone and construction of already-written phrases while also providing data from online resources to “strengthen arguments.”

Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of AI21 Labs, told TechCrunch via email: “We see new great AI capabilities introduced on a weekly basis — [AI systems] that generate visuals, sounds, and text in a convincing human-seeming manner. “Despite all the enthusiasm, these technologies must be sturdy, trustworthy, and understandable in order to be useful.”

To that purpose, Wordtune Spices directs users back to the original sources by citing its own work for each fact it offers. That is one step beyond ChatGPT, which occasionally refers to sources that don’t exist and doesn’t always describe them correctly.

In order to find suitable sources on which to base Wordtune Spices’ responses and to provide the source links alongside information, AI21 claims to have created “grounding and attribution” algorithms. A thesis statement and major ideas can be written with the tool’s assistance. It also offers comparisons and creative expressions like jokes and quotes, as well as explanations and refutations.

Users can instruct Wordtune Spices to recommend rewrites suitable for specific professional documents by selecting from a variety of cues (for example, “legal,” “health care”). However, according to Goshen, Spices was created to cover a wide range of use cases, from creating financial reports to writing essays and working on blogs.

Spices doesn’t have a feature that can generate an entire essay with just one click because, according to Goshen, this doesn’t foster the development of good writers. “Instead, we equip the user with a toolbox of language and storytelling tools for them to craft their text to perfection by making decisions on their own from a host of possibilities.”

But how effective is Wordtune Spices in real-world use, and how does it compare to other AI-powered writing aids?

One of those programs is called Writer; it uses an AI engine to assess important criteria including plagiarism, sentence complexity, formality, and active voice usage. Grammarly provides advice on tone and fashion. Ginger, ProWritingAid, and Slick Write all do the same.

Due to technical difficulties on the part of AI21, this reporter was unable to test Spices before it was released. However, based on a quick demo film, the rewriting capability seemed to function adequately with the exception of the rare grammatical mistake. Spices suggested the phrase “Some people, like content writers, may be scared of AI, but it can help you create high-quality content with a minimum of effort” as a complement to the statement “It’s no secret that artificial intelligence tools have become one of the latest trends in content writing, blogging, and copywriting as a whole.”

Spices based their suggestion on a New York Times article, but Goshen acknowledges that there may be instances in which the tool “[misses] material that should have been evaluated.” In addition, he emphasized that while filters and “other precautions” have been put in place to attempt to stop Spices from producing biased or toxic content, a challenge for text-generating technologies like ChatGPT, the model may still “make mistakes” on occasion.

We’ve been developing smart filters and other security measures. In that regard, we also made an effort to prevent any trolling attempts, Goshen continued. Despite this, Spices isn’t infallible, particularly because it’s challenging to teach a [system] to make delicate judgments that occasionally even humans find difficult.

Goshen claims that as Spices develops, AI21 intends to “make it more robust” and “focus a lot” on moderation. However, Spices probably isn’t the ideal solution for AI enthusiasts who are holding out for it, even though it largely performs as promised.