AI Roundup 067: GPT-4o and Google I/O
May 17, 2024.
GPT-4o
OpenAI held their Spring Update event on Monday, with a new model, GPT-4o.
Between the lines:
At a high level, the model is cheaper, faster, and beats GPT-4 on various benchmarks. For a deep dive, check out Conrad Gray's excellent post.
The model is also natively multimodal, meaning it understands your emotions and can offer some of its own - even Sam Altman has compared it to the film Her.
OpenAI is also releasing a desktop app with GPT-4o, with the ability to view screenshots and presumably work with your files someday.
Elsewhere in AI apps:
ElevenLabs released Reader, its first consumer app to read web pages and other documents aloud.
Anthropic launches its Claude Pro and Team subscription plans in Europe, available via web and iOS.
And Hugging Face commits $10M in free GPUs to help indie developers and academics build more AI apps.
Google I/O
But the biggest news this week came from Google I/O, which announced a slew of AI updates and features across its products and services.
All the announcements I could find:
A new version of Gemini Pro that can handle up to 2 million tokens.
Gemini 1.5 Flash, a new model with similar capabilities to Pro but faster and cheaper.
Gemini Gems, personalized chatbots similar to GPTs.
Veo, a video generation model that outputs 1080p videos over a minute long.
Project Astra, an experimental real-time AI agent.
LearnLM, a new family of AI models for education.
Music AI Sandbox, an unreleased set of music tools to create loops from prompts.
AI-powered scam detection for Android phones.
Ask Photos will search your photo library using Gemini.
Gemini on Android will integrate with Gmail, Messages, YouTube, and more.
The SynthID watermark system can work with generative text and video.
Project IDX, an AI-centric browser IDE, is now in open beta.
Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps.
Trillium, the sixth generation of Google's Cloud TPU chip.
Google Lens can now search using audio and video input.
Gemini Nano is coming to Chrome on the desktop.
An AI-centric redesign of Google's classic search pages.
And Gemini Pro is coming to Workspace Labs and educational institutions.
Elsewhere in the FAANG free-for-all:
Microsoft unveils Places, an AI-powered app to help employees coordinate in-office time more effectively.
Anthropic hires Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger as its new Chief Product Officer.
And Microsoft will reportedly launch its Cobalt 100 chips, announced last November, as a public preview next week.
Senator Schumer's AI roadmap
A bipartisan group of senators released a legislative roadmap for AI, calling for tens of billions in annual spending and recommending areas for more focus.
What to watch:
While it makes recommendations, the 20-page plan doesn't specifically propose any new laws - deferring to established Congressional committees and agencies.
But they're on the clock - intelligence officials believe foreign adversaries will try to influence US elections this year, with AI as a new tool.
For now, the Senate Rules Committee has passed three bills aimed at safeguarding elections from AI content, though they will still need to pass the House.
Elsewhere in AI geopolitics:
State lawmakers and AI lobbyists are trying to wrangle cutting edge AI regulation at the state level.
The UK AI Safety Institute released Inspect, an evaluation tool for model safety.
And in high-level talks, the US raised concerns about China's "misuse of AI," while China disagreed with "restrictions and pressure" from the US.
Elsewhere in AI anxiety:
Sony Music sent a letter to over 700 AI companies and developers warning them not to use any of its content in training AI models.
Youth advocacy group Encode Justice released 22 policy recommendations for world leaders to protect young people from some downsides of AI.
And a growing number of startups are selling deepfake detection services, though their capabilities are largely untested.
Things happen
Reddit content is coming to ChatGPT. Replit lays off 20% of staff and pivots to enterprise sales. Microsoft is asking hundreds of China-based AI employees to consider relocating. Stability AI is reportedly talking to potential buyers. The arrival of AI search risks breaking the status quo of the web. David Sacks reveals Glue, a new employee chat app. xAI has been talking to Oracle about a $10B deal to rent cloud servers. German companies are increasingly experimenting with AI tools. AI startups in the Bay Area raised over $27B in 2023. How makers of nonconsensual AI porn make a living on Patreon. Falcon 2 11B, a new LLM to compete with Llama and Gemini in five European languages. Microsoft plans to invest €4B in France, mostly focused on AI and data infrastructure. Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. SoftBank's Arm plans to launch AI chips in 2025. Airlines are using AI to save fuel, update customers and manage connecting flights. AI personas are the future of dating, Bumble founder says. AI generated hentai is viral all over Facebook. Newspaper conglomerate Gannett is adding AI-generated summaries.
