We usually wait until the November to start tracking which of our annual trends and predictions were right. Though it’s only April, we’re going to say that our prediction about ChatGPT is a clear and decisive winner. We probably would need to use a chatbot to track and summarize all the coverage about ChatGPT and its competitors.

There have been tons of stories. Some saying how chatbots will make our jobs easier or create new jobs, others saying AI chatbots will kill many jobs. Some saying that “AI will end poverty and (others) warning that it could end human civilization,” according to a Bloomberg Businessweek article, entitled “To Fear AI, or Not, That is the Question” (in the print edition) by Joshua Brustein.

Just to be clear, we did not write this using ChatGPT or other AI chatbot. Not that we’re adverse about the technology. We’ve been testing it out to see how we might use it on behalf of our clients.

But our main point is that there’s a lot to explore in terms of capabilities and the implications. We’re pleased that the trend we identified as our #1 trend for 2023 will likely be the top trend for the year.

We’re also right when we said that the futures of both TikTok and Section 230 is questionable. We don’t think it will be feasible or popular for Congress or local state houses to ban TikTok. We also think that the Supreme Court is likely to rule against Section 230 but that the result will lead to more disruption, and not the good kind.

As for other trends we predicted for 2023, we do think we got this one right:  media coverage of the transformation of the workweek, offices and downtowns will continue.

There is one prediction we’re now not as assured we’ll be correct.

We both Twitter and TikTok will survive 2023 but their uncertain future will generate a lot of coverage. We believe Twitter will survive because many users still depend on it and there’s no true successor yet.

We’re talking about Twitter.

We know the future of Twitter has generated a lot of media coverage. And we still feel there’s no true success yet. But we feel the exodus of advertisers, content producers and readers will continue. The implementation of removing the Blue Checks this week has not gone well. Some celebrates like LeBron James and Stephen King have said they’re not paying a monthly fee though they still have a Blue Check next to their names. A response we saw — though we can’t claim it’s accurate — from an account that seems to be Elon Musk’s — said Musk was paying for some Blue Checks personally.  Musk later clarified that he’s only paying for James, King and William Shatner because all three had posted that they were not going pay.

There are aspect we still like but we’ve seen an increase of hateful tweets, which makes it hard to recommend clients to continue to post and engage on Twitter. We think the removal of Blue Checks hurts Twitter because it makes it harder to know if people or organizations are who they claim to be — leading to this post that’s probably from comedian Jon Stewart: “So sad…am I…still me?”

So we’re not sure how things will shake out for Twitter.