The next online revolution has started. It is gathering pace at breakneck speed. It began on November the 30th when the tech company OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot. This is a search box you can have a conversation with. It can provide the answer to pretty much any request you make, in perfect grammar. Should you require a 300-word text about a movie star written in the style of Shakespeare, you will get it. ChatGPT has spread like wildfire across social media. Analysts have dubbed it a game changer. Hot on the heels of ChatGPT comes Google's Bard chatbot. This was launched on February the 6th. A Google-Microsoft battle for supremacy over the future of online search is now unfolding.

There are countless questions regarding how chatbots will shake up the Internet and our world. Educators are worrying about "the end of homework" as bots can instantly provide convincing essays and answers to a grade-A standard. Workers are concerned the bots are a genuine threat to all manner of jobs. On the day Microsoft added ChatGPT to its Bing search engine, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated: "It's a new day in search." Google allayed people's fears about the emergence and possible threats of chatbots. It said: "AI can deepen our understanding of information and turn it into useful knowledge more efficiently – making it easier for people to get to the heart of what they're looking for and get things done."