I’ve been tracking developments in Spark 3 as it was being rebuilt, but I was not expecting the announcement that it was now available with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the same chatbot that Microsoft is using for its revamped Bing search. That’s also what Microsoft will bring to its Outlook email client, and other components of the Microsoft 365 suite, but Spark got there first.
One important thing to know: Spark sends your prompts and in come cases the email you’re writing to OpenAI’s servers. If you ask Spark +AI to generate a reply to an email you received, and you put the text of that email into the prompt, that will be retained by OpenAI. If you ask Spark to rephrase or tweak an email you or it has created, that also goes to OpenAI.
As an example, on the day before this column was due to my editor, I was not feeling well and I was concerned I may not be able to write. Fortunately, I recovered on deadline day, and typed out a brief note saying, “I'm feeling better, and so you WILL get a column today.”When I told Spark to expand that one-line email, it offered this:
“Just wanted to give you a quick update on my column submission. First things first, I'm doing much better and feeling great! Secondly, I will totally make sure that the column is submitted before the deadline. Thanks a lot for being so cool and understanding during this whole situation. You rock!”