A week in Generative AI: OpenAI, Character.ai and Jony Ive
News for the week ending 1st October 2023
And I thought last week was a busy week for generative AI news⌠this week sees numerous big announcements from OpenAI, plus new from Meta, Character.ai, Amazon & Anthropic and Microsoft. Oh, and Jony Ive could be back to help Sam Altman some AI centric hardwareâŚ. nothing to see here đ.
OpenAI announces some big updates (and some rumoursâŚ)
This week OpenAI announced DALL-E 3 and its integration into ChatGPT. It also announced the return of Web Browsing. So now (or very soon!) ChatGPT will be able to see, hear, speak, output images and have up-to-date knowledge. Thatâs a pretty big week all round!
There are also rumours that what weâre seeing publicly is just a flavour of whatâs to come. Their âArrakisâ model sounds like a GPT 4.5 with a large number of improvements and is an âeverything-to-everythingâ model.
Then thereâs AGI rumours and this tweet from Sam Altman. Interesting times ahead!
ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak: Source
Web Browsing: Source
Rumours: Source
Generative AI as the foundation of future operating systems
I couldnât have put this tweet from Andrej Kaparthy better and is totally in line with what weâll see with generative AI becoming the foundation of the next computing paradigm.
Meta announces a sweet of new AI features
So much to unpack here from Meta, but the big thing for me is the idea of generative AI models based on and endorsed by celebrities. God knows how much Meta is paying them but giving people the opportunity to have a conversation with their heroes could be a big money spinner. Very much like an official Character.ai model. Speaking of whichâŚ
Character.ai in Early Talks for Funding at More Than $5 Billion Valuation
If this funding leads to Character.AI being able to scale faster then they already are then I think weâll see if quickly become the next TikTok and a truly scaled generative AI entertainment platform.
Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Raise $1B to Design the 'iPhone of AI'
This could be an amazing collaboration but I wouldnât expect anything to come from it for at least 2-3 years, if at all. Meanwhile, we have Humaneâs âAI Pinâ debuting on the Paris runway. Hardware will see a shakeup but I just donât think weâll be able to get away from needing screens until theyâre strapped to our heads.
Amazon to invest as much as $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic
Thatâs a lot of money! I was slightly surprised to see this from Amazon at first, but then I realised that theyâre the only one of the current big tech firms that didnât have an AI play of their own. So, makes a lot of sense.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Release Date Set for November
I donât think this will be as impressive as it makes out to be at first, but is a really important first step towards the future computing paradigm mentioned above that I expect weâll see.
OpenAI is reportedly raising funds at a valuation of $80 billion to $90 billion
So much cash monies flying around this space now! I previous did some rough maths and worked out that it would take c.100 years for OpenAI to pay back Microsoftâs $13bn investment, even with revenues of $1bn a year. But, this could just be a nice way for the company to let employees start benefiting from the shares they own and the current hype-cycle.
This weekâs AI Ethics news
The writers strike is over; here's how AI negotiations shook out
Oops! Google Search caught publicly indexing usersâ conversations with Bard AI
Deepfake election risks trigger EU call for more generative AI safeguards
Google adds a switch for publishers to opt out of becoming AI training data
This weekâs long reads
Scientific America - Artificial Intelligence Could Finally Let Us Talk with Animals
âThe future is already here, itâs just not evenly distributed.â
William Gibson