The hot technology that will invade our lives in 2023

By Brian X. Chen

Each year, I look ahead at what’s new in technology to predict the tech that may affect your life in a big way — and the tech that will most likely be a fad.

Toward the end of the year, came something truly remarkable. OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, released ChatGPT, a chatbot that can generate seemingly intelligent responses to questions. People prodding the bot with requests quickly realized that it could compose essays, write code and draft business proposals.

We can expect lots of interesting advancements in AI-powered, language processing tech, along with the same trends that have endured in the past few years, including advances in electric cars and the metaverse. Perhaps there may even be a rebirth of social media.

Here are tech developments that will invade our lives in 2023.

New chatty assistants

Early adopters who have been wowed by the linguistic competence of ChatGPT have just as quickly been stunned by how wrong it can be, particularly with simple arithmetic. Flaws aside, we can realistically expect AI companies to improve on the strengths of these chatbots with tools that streamline how we write and read text, AI experts say.

That doesn’t mean that we’ll see a flood of stand-alone AI apps in 2023. It may be more the case that many tools we already use for work will begin building automatic language generation into their apps. Rowan Curran, a technology analyst at research firm Forrester, said apps like Microsoft Word and Google Sheets could soon embed AI tools to streamline people’s workflows.

Virtual reality, aka the Metaverse

For much of the past decade, tech companies have been promoting virtual reality headsets, such as the Quest 2, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR, for playing games. Now that the technology has evolved to become more powerful and wireless, tech companies are making lofty promises that these headsets will eventually reshape our lives similar to the ways that smartphones have changed us.

Meta, for one, imagines that the metaverse could be a virtual space where we work, collaborate and create. In its unveiling of the Quest Pro headset this year, the company envisioned that the tech could become a multitasking tool for workers juggling meetings while scrolling through emails and other tasks. Yet upon release, the device received lukewarm reviews, and it remains to be seen whether Meta can bring to life its vision for the metaverse.

In 2023, the VR drumbeat will go on. Apple, which has publicly said it will never use the word “metaverse,” is widely expected to release its first headset. Although the company has yet to share details about the product, Apple CEO Tim Cook has laid out clues, expressing his excitement about using augmented reality to take advantage of digital data in the physical world.

“You’ll wonder how you lived your life without augmented reality, just like today you wonder: How did people like me grow up without the internet?” Cook said in September to students in Naples, Italy.

Chen is a journalist with NYT©2023

The New York Times