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Comment by albert_e | Hacker News Reader

Should the title say ChatGPT or gpt-4 (the model) instead of OpenAI (the company)?

There is a certain justice in the use of OpenAI as a name for their product, given that OpenAI has turned the generic technical GPT name into a brand.

The generative pretrained transformer was invented by OpenAI, and it seems reasonable for a company to use the name it gave to its invention in its branding.

Of course, they didn't invent Generative pretraining (GP) or transfomers (T) but AFAIK they were the first to publicly combine them

GPT is not a brand. A court ruling turned down that notion. It's a technology.

That only means it’s not a legally recognised brand, but it is a brand nonetheless if people associate the two (and they do). A bit like the way people associate tissue paper with Kleenex, or photocopies with Xerox, or git with GitHub.

I wonder if OpenAI will stick with the GPT acronym, given that most people don't know what it's an acronym for and it's a bit of a mouthful.

I doubt many people know the correct full forms of LED, LCD, USB, HDMI, Wi-Fi, HTTP, URL, etc. either

> the correct full forms of (…) Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi isn’t like the others on your list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi#Etymology_and_terminolog...

> The name Wi-Fi, commercially used at least as early as August 1999, was coined by the brand-consulting firm Interbrand. The Wi-Fi Alliance had hired Interbrand to create a name that was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'." According to Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the term Wi-Fi was chosen from a list of ten names that Interbrand proposed. (…)

> The name Wi-Fi is not short-form for 'Wireless Fidelity' (…) The name Wi-Fi was partly chosen because it sounds similar to Hi-Fi, which consumers take to mean high fidelity or high quality. Interbrand hoped consumers would find the name catchy, and that they would assume this wireless protocol has high fidelity because of its name.

And that they launch new models so often that GPT could mean 3.5, 4, 4o mini, or 4, just to name the ones I know off the top of my head.

I left my Kleenex next to the Xerox.

Better Hoover it up!

All jokes aside, I've never heard anyone call vacuuming hoover. I wonder if that was a older statement?

In the UK it's very common

More common in the UK

I have, but only as an idiom, never literally. E.g. "Microsoft just keeps hoovering up companies", but the literal act of vacuuming is only called vacuuming.

I've also never heard anyone call photocopying "xeroxing". I'm guessing maybe it's an age thing.

It depends on the region. In certain countries Gillette is used for any shaving razor.

growing up in India over past 4 decades .. 'Xerox' was/is the default and most common word used for photocopying ... only recently have I started using/hearing the term 'photocopy'.

every town and every street had "XEROX shops" where people went to get various documents photocopied for INR 1 per page for example

Most photocopy centers are still called XEROX Shops -- and their boards say that in big bold text: https://www.google.com/search?q=xerox+shop+india&udm=2

It doesnt matter if they use Canon, HP, or other brands of machines

It was the fashion at the time, even if the hoover did keep bumping the onion.

(This is actually really interesting, I had no idea that 'hoover' was specifically a U.K. thing that didn't make it to the U.S.)

Everyone I know from the UK says "hoovering" 100% of the time instead of vacuuming.

It might just be a regionalism, it's not uncommon that such genericization only applies to specific dialects (Like calling all sodas coke)

I got hurt doing it so applied some Bandaids.

Don't say Velcro!

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=don't+say+velcr...

(Content warning: profanity. This search page is SFW, but the videos it links to may not be.)

It would have been a better title, yes.

I agree, this would make the title more accurate.

I think it should not say the name of the company, but either ChatGPT or GPT-x.

more likely to get downvotes that way, potentially even downweighted

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