Business Roundup Week Ending April 19

ChatGPT Gets Smarter Again

• OpenAI has released GPT-4 Turbo, an upgraded version of its AI model, for premium ChatGPT users.
• The new model improves ChatGPT’s capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding.
• It has a more up-to-date knowledge base, with training data extending to December 2023.
• ChatGPT responses will now be more direct, less verbose, and use more conversational language.
• The update follows the launch of GPT-4 Turbo with Vision in OpenAI’s API, which adds image understanding capabilities.
• Get all the details in this article from TechCrunch.

US DOJ Publishes Standards for Government Web Accessibility

• The US Justice Department has issued a final rule requiring websites of state and local governments to be compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard.
• The ruling also applies to entities that receive government funding, and will likely increase the litigation risk for those that don’t comply.
• Key Highlights of the New Requirements:
  • WCAG 2.1 AA is the required technical standard for web pages and mobile apps
  • Entities have 2-3 years to comply based on its size
  • Some exceptions exist for archived web content, pre-existing documents and social media posts, etc.
• These new rules apply to websites and mobile apps.
• You can get all the legal requirements on the ADA website, as well as the press release from the DOJ.

The Admin Bar Publishes 2024 Web Professionals Survey Results

• Kyle Van Deusen has published the results of The Admin Bar’s 3rd Annual Web Professionals Survey.
• 1,144 freelancers and agency owners responded from locations around the world including USA (475), UK (134), Australia (83), and Canada (82).
• 73% are full-time with an average team size of 2.
• 72% charge less than $5,000 (on average) for a website.
• 68% had a gross revenue of less than $100,000 USD (less than 10% make $100,000+ per year).
• The average hourly rate for those surveyed is $94/hr ($2 lower than last year).
• 66% are producing 90% or more of their work in-house, and nearly  ⅔ say their WP business is growing.
• More than half are using AI for work they previously paid a human to do.
• View a top level summary of the survey results, or access the raw data in an Airtable.

Worth a Look

• AI has been in WordPress plugins for a while now. Here are the 5 Best AI Plugins for WordPress (And Should You Use Them?)
• WordPress is creating a “faster web”. Read about the recent improvements that make the internet faster for everyone.
• Beaver Builder is celebrating 10 years and they have big plans for the future of their page builder!