While generative adversarial networks were infiltrating cultural, social, and scientific spheres, they quietly transformed the web into a bottomless well of synthetic images of . . . well, you name it.

AI accelerated the search for a coronavirus vaccine, detected Covid-19 cases, and otherwise softened the pandemic’s blow. Machine learning researchers worldwide scrambled to harness the technology against the coronavirus.

Earlier language models powered by Word2Vec and GloVe embeddings yielded confused chatbots, grammar tools with middle-school reading comprehension, and not-half-bad translations. The latest generation is so good, some people consider it dangerous.