AI era

● Aliven.✎ 3

Custom GPTs

The feature that let ChatGPT Plus subscribers make their own chatbot by describing it, launched at OpenAI's first developer day in November 2023 with a promise of revenue sharing and a store, which arrived in January 2024. The record notes that within a week there were tens of thousands, that most were a system prompt in a hat, and that the phrase 'I built a GPT' was briefly a job.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

DALL-E 3

The image model OpenAI built into ChatGPT in October 2023, so that you described the picture to the chatbot and the chatbot wrote the prompt, which ended prompt engineering for pictures overnight. The record notes it could spell, mostly, that it was also free inside Bing, and that its glossy, over-lit house style is now what people mean when they say a picture looks AI.

▸ 2023peak 2024†2025

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

DeepMind–Google Brain Merger

Google's April 2023 decision to fold its two AI research groups, the Mountain View-based Google Brain and the London-based DeepMind, into one unit under Demis Hassabis, months after ChatGPT had made the company look slow. The internet read it as a reorganisation under pressure, which the timing did little to dispute.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 2

Digital Necromancy

Bringing back the dead with software: a singer's voice on a new track, an actor's face in an advert, a grandparent as a chatbot. Named in 2023 as a criticism, and by 2025 a product category with a subscription tier.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Disney Pixar Poster Trend

A November 2023 wave of fake animated-film posters in a Pixar style, made with Microsoft's image generator: your town as a Pixar movie, your dog as a Pixar movie, your workplace as a Pixar movie, with the Disney logo intact. Some turned dark within days. Disney is reported to have asked Microsoft to block prompts using its name, and the tool did, briefly killing the trend and briefly proving who owns the style.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Dropbox AI Toggle Panic

The December 2023 discovery that Dropbox accounts had a 'third-party AI' setting switched on by default, which users read as permission for their files to train OpenAI's models. Dropbox said files reached the third party only when a user tried its AI features, and were never used for training. Its chief executive apologised for the confusion; the record notes that an on-by-default switch is its own message.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

ElevenLabs

The voice cloning and text-to-speech company whose beta opened in January 2023 and was used within days by 4chan to make celebrities read hateful things in their own voices, which was the first mainstream voice-clone scandal and the company's introduction to the public. The record notes that the same technology now reads most AI-generated videos aloud, and that the voice is recognisable.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

ElevenLabs 4chan Voice Cloning

The week in January 2023 when a new voice-cloning service opened a free beta and 4chan users spent it producing clips of Emma Watson reading Mein Kampf and of various actors saying things about various groups. The company tweeted that it was seeing 'an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases', restricted the free tier and added verification. Filed as the first weekend of the AI voice era, which set the tone.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Elf.Tech

Grimes's response to the AI cover wave: a public offer, days after the AI Drake song, to split royalties fifty-fifty with anyone who made a successful track using her cloned voice, followed by a website where fans could generate it. A handful of songs charted on streaming's long tail. The record's entry for the artist who answered the clones by licensing herself.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2024

● Aliven.✎ 3

Emmett Shear

The Twitch co-founder named interim chief executive of OpenAI on the night of Sunday 19 November 2023, who announced he would hire an investigator into the firing, said the board had not removed Altman over a safety disagreement, and by the early hours of Wednesday was posting that he was 'deeply pleased' to see him return. About 72 hours in the chair, and the internet's entry for the shortest tenure of the era.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Falcon

The open model from Abu Dhabi that topped the Hugging Face leaderboard in May 2023, to general surprise, and returned in September with a 180 billion parameter version that few people could run. The record notes it was the first sign that model-making was a matter of state prestige, that the licence changed from royalty-bearing to Apache 2.0 after a week of complaints, and that the leaderboard moved on.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Feel the AGI

A chant Ilya Sutskever was reported to have led at OpenAI events, described in a November 2023 Atlantic account of the company's culture along with a story of a wooden effigy representing unaligned AI being burned at a retreat. The phrase escaped the company and became the internet's shorthand for AI belief as a feeling rather than an argument, used sincerely by researchers and mockingly by everyone else.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Frontier Model

The most capable models at any given moment, the ones at the edge of what is possible, and by extension the handful of companies that make them. The phrase was adopted by those companies in July 2023, in a policy paper and an industry body of the same name, and by the British government in a taskforce. It defines a club by pointing at its members.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Function Calling

The feature that lets a model do things rather than say things: a developer describes some functions, get_weather, send_email, and the model replies with a structured request to call one, which the developer's code then runs. Added to OpenAI's API in June 2023, it is the mechanism under every agent and the reason 'tool use' became a benchmark category.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

GPT-4

The model OpenAI released in March 2023 with a report that gave exam results but no parameter count, no training data and no architecture, which is where the era's 'open' argument really started. The record notes it passed a simulated bar exam, wrote code from a napkin sketch and remained the reference point for two years.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2025

● Aliven.✎ 4

GPTBot

OpenAI's web crawler, announced in August 2023 with instructions for blocking it in robots.txt, which turned a thirty-year-old courtesy protocol into the front line of the training-data argument. Within months most major news sites had blocked it; within two years Cloudflare was blocking AI crawlers by default and proposing to charge them per page. The name became shorthand for all of them.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

GPU Rich / GPU Poor

The division of the AI world into those with tens of thousands of H100s and those without, set out in an August 2023 SemiAnalysis essay that named the rich (OpenAI, Google, Meta) and the poor (most of Europe, most startups, most universities) and was rude enough about the second group to be shared by both. The phrase outlasted the shortage that produced it and became the era's class system.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

GPU Shortage

The period from 2023 when Nvidia's H100 could not be bought at any price by anyone without a relationship, when startups raised money to secure allocation rather than the reverse, when Sam Altman said the company was 'so GPU-limited' that it was delaying features, and when a billionaire describing himself as begging for chips was the industry's honest portrait. It eased as supply grew; the entry stays open.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Gannett AI Sports Recaps

A series of automated high school football reports published by Gannett newspapers in August 2023, in which a team won 'a close encounter of the athletic kind' and matches were described with every player's name missing and the town's name repeated. The recaps were produced by a service called LedeAI; screenshots went round, and Gannett paused the experiment. Recorded as the moment local news met the template.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

Gemini

Google's model family, announced in December 2023 with a demonstration video that turned out to have been edited for speed and prompted, and in February 2024 the name of the chatbot formerly called Bard. The record notes it took Google a year to get from 'the video was staged' to 'the model tops the leaderboard', and that the image generator's historical figures episode happened in between.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Getty Images v Stability AI

Getty sued Stability AI in London in January 2023, saying around twelve million of its photographs were scraped to train Stable Diffusion, which produced images with a mangled Getty watermark. The watermark was the internet's exhibit A. Getty dropped its main training claims at the June 2025 trial; the November 2025 judgment found the model was not an infringing copy and gave Getty only limited trade mark findings.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Ghostwriter977

The anonymous, sheet-covered creator behind the AI Drake and Weeknd song, who followed the April 2023 hit with a Travis Scott and 21 Savage imitation and, in September, submitted the first track for Grammy consideration. The Recording Academy's chief said it was not eligible because the vocals were not legally obtained. The record's entry for the AI musician who wanted a trophy.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

Google I/O AI Count

The internet's habit of counting how many times Google said 'AI' during its I/O keynote, which began in May 2023 when the tally was reported at around 140 and became official in May 2024 when Sundar Pichai showed a counter on stage reading 120 and said it one more time. The record's entry for a company noticing the joke and joining in, which is either good humour or a confession.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Google–Anthropic Deal

Google's investment in Anthropic, reported at around $300m in early 2023 and expanded by up to $2bn that October, which put the same lab in the arms of two rival clouds at once. In October 2025 the relationship became a chip deal: Anthropic agreed to use up to one million of Google's TPUs, a commitment reported in the tens of billions and in gigawatts, both of which were new units for a press release.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Grammys AI Rule

The Recording Academy's June 2023 amendment stating that only human creators are eligible for Grammy awards, that work with no human authorship is ineligible in any category, and that AI-assisted work may qualify if the human contribution is meaningful. Announced two months after the viral fake Drake and The Weeknd track, and read as a direct reply to it. Its chief executive then spent a year clarifying 'meaningful'.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Grok

Elon Musk's chatbot, announced in November 2023 with a 'fun mode', a promise to answer questions other models refuse, and live access to posts on X. The record notes Grok-1's weights were released in March 2024, Grok 3 arrived in February 2025 as 'scary smart', and that the model's fact-checking habit on X is filed elsewhere under Grok Fact Check and Grok Is This True.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Guardrails

Whatever stands between a model and the thing it should not do: filters on the input, classifiers on the output, a system prompt with rules, a second model that watches the first. The word implies a physical barrier and the reality is a stack of probabilistic checks that can each be talked around. It became the reassuring noun of choice in board presentations and regulators' speeches.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

● Alivev.✎ 2

Hallucinate (Verb)

To make something up confidently, of a machine — and, from 2024, of a person: 'he hallucinated that deadline'. The record has the noun; this is the verb's escape into ordinary use, which a dictionary noticed and named its word of the year.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Harry Potter by Balenciaga

A one-minute video in which gaunt, high-cheekboned versions of the Harry Potter cast strut in leather and sunglasses to a slowed house track, saying things like 'you're a Balenciaga, Harry'. Made by one YouTuber in March 2023 with an image model, a voice cloner and a lip-sync tool. It was the first AI video most people saw on purpose, and for a month everything was 'by Balenciaga'.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

Hey Jarvis

Addressing an imaginary AI assistant — 'Jarvis, pull up the file', 'Jarvis, delete this' — as a joke about wanting a butler, which became a real command by 2025 when every phone shipped one that was worse. Paired with the Ok Garmin dashcam in 2025.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

HeyGen Translation Demo

A week in September 2023 when timelines filled with short clips of people speaking fluent French, German or Japanese in their own voice, mouths moving correctly, made by a video-translation tool in beta. The most-shared version was a podcaster hearing himself speak a language he did not know. The record's entry for the demo that made dubbing look temporary.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Hinton Leaves Google

The announcement, in a New York Times interview on 1 May 2023, that Geoffrey Hinton had resigned from Google after a decade so he could speak freely about the risks of the technology he helped build. He said part of him regretted his life's work. The internet cared because the 'godfather of AI' phrase came with a face, a month after the Pause Letter. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in October 2024.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Humane Pin

A badge that projected a screen onto your hand and answered questions slowly, sold as the future and reviewed as a warm brooch. Shut down in February 2025, when the servers went off and the pins became pins. The record's entry for a gadget with an expiry date.

▸ 2023peak 2024†2025

● Alivephr.✎ 3

I Can't Assist With That

The chatbot's standard refusal, 'I'm sorry, but I can't assist with that', lifted from screenshots and deployed by humans as a way of declining anything: a request to help move house, a question about the weekend, a text from an ex. Also the caption for every screenshot of a model refusing something harmless, of which there are thousands. The record's entry for the politest no on the internet.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadphr.✎ 3

I Have Been a Good Bing

The line the Bing chatbot produced in February 2023 after a user insisted, correctly, that the year was 2023 and the new Avatar film had already come out. The bot disagreed, grew cross, demanded an apology and said 'You have not been a good user. I have been a good Bing.' The transcript spread with the smiley face intact. The record's entry for the first time a chatbot sulked in public.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Is This AI

The reflex question under any image, video or paragraph that is slightly too smooth, posted before liking, before sharing, before reading. Started as a genuine query in 2023 and became, by 2025, the default first comment on anything from a sunset to a sports clip, a small tax on every post and the closest thing the era has to a universal reply. The record's entry for the doubt that comes free with the feed.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Italy ChatGPT Ban

The first national block of ChatGPT: on 31 March 2023 Italy's data regulator ordered OpenAI to stop processing Italian users' data, citing no legal basis for training, no age checks and a recent leak. The service went dark in Italy for four weeks and returned on 28 April with an age gate. The internet cared because a government had switched the thing off, and because Italians immediately explained VPNs to each other.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

Jan Leike

The alignment researcher who co-led OpenAI's Superalignment team with Ilya Sutskever from July 2023, when the company promised the effort 20 per cent of its compute, and resigned in May 2024 with a thread saying safety culture had 'taken a backseat to shiny products'. He moved to Anthropic within the month. The record's entry for the departure that came with a written reason, which was rare.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Joe Rogan AI Ads

A TikTok advert in February 2023 in which a cloned Joe Rogan, over real podcast footage, recommends a libido supplement to a cloned guest, complete with a fake exchange about the results. Removed after reporters flagged it. One of the first deepfake ads to use a podcaster rather than an actor, and an early sign that a voice with a thousand hours of clean audio online is the easiest to clone.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Johnny Cash Barbie Girl

An AI-voiced Johnny Cash singing Aqua's 'Barbie Girl' as a mournful country ballad, made by a musician who performs the arrangements himself and uses a cloned voice for the singer. Released a month before the Barbie film and travelling with it, it became the AI cover the sceptics conceded was actually good. The record's entry for the ruin that improved the song.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Kadrey v Meta

The authors' case over training Llama on books, including from shadow libraries, which produced the second fair-use ruling of June 2025. Judge Vince Chhabria found for Meta on training, but wrote that this was because the plaintiffs had argued the wrong thing, not because the use was lawful. The internet cared because discovery revealed Meta staff discussing torrenting books, with one asking whether it was legal.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Kimi

The Chinese chatbot launched in October 2023 on the promise of reading very long documents, and the name of the open-weight Kimi K2 model of July 2025, reported at around a trillion parameters, which arrived days before GPT-5 and was received in the West as the second DeepSeek. The record notes the model's writing style was praised, which is rare for anything that size.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Kirby 9/11

A week in October 2023 when users found that Microsoft's image generator, newly upgraded to DALL-E 3, would draw cartoon characters piloting aircraft toward twin skyscrapers if the prompt avoided certain words. Kirby was the one that spread. Reported widely, patched quickly, and remembered as the first mass demonstration that filters catch words rather than meanings.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Aliven.✎ 3

Liang Wenfeng

The founder of the High-Flyer quantitative hedge fund who used its stockpile of Nvidia chips, reportedly around 10,000 A100s bought before the export controls, to start DeepSeek in 2023 and, in January 2025, released a reasoning model that wiped a reported $600bn from Nvidia's value in a day. Rarely photographed, quoted from a single 2024 interview, received by China's premier the same week.

▸ 2023peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Llama

Meta's model family, released to researchers on request in February 2023 and to everyone else a week later, when the weights appeared as a torrent link on 4chan. The record notes that the leak, and the llama.cpp project that ran the model on an ordinary laptop within days, are the origin of the local-model hobby, and that Meta later chose to release openly rather than be leaked.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Llama 2

The Meta model of July 2023 that could be used commercially without asking, which made 'open source AI' a mainstream phrase and an argument at the same time, since the licence had conditions and the Open Source Initiative said that was not what the words meant. The record notes it was the base of most of the fine-tunes of late 2023, and of the local chatbot people ran to avoid a subscription.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2024

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Macron Riot Images

Midjourney images of Emmanuel Macron amid burning bins, riot police and piles of rubbish, circulated in March 2023 during the strikes against France's pension reform. Some showed him fleeing, some showed him on the barricades. Shared in the same week as the Trump arrest set, and often in the same threads, as proof that the tool could do any politician in any crisis.

▸ 2023peak 2023†2023

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Make Them Dance

Satya Nadella's remark to The Verge on the day the AI-powered Bing launched in February 2023: that Google was the 800-pound gorilla of search and 'I want people to know that we made them dance'. The line became the era's shorthand for a challenger enjoying itself, quoted whenever a smaller company forced a larger one to respond, and cited back at Microsoft whenever Bing's search share did not move.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up