Before the Countdown: Revisiting GenAI's Transformative 2024 Journey!
Anshul Kumar
Generative AI Technology Evangelist | 2x LinkedIn Top AI Voice | Digital Transformation Leader
By now, you've likely come across numerous articles discussing the developments in Generative AI throughout 2024. Instead of reiterating the same details, this article dives into some of the most intriguing aspects of Generative AI and its profound impact on us over the past year. Let’s explore!
The Number Game
We love numbers, let's have a look at few interesting numbers
Hyper-Personalization Revolution
Generative AI has enabled hyper-personalized experiences, with 71% of consumers now expecting personalized interactions from companies.
You and I are no exception to this trend. Just recently, while chatting with customer service bot for an e-commerce site, I couldn’t help but wish for a more intelligence. The old-fashioned way of asking a barrage of questions feels, well, outdated.
Today, we expect these bots to act more like mind readers. If I’m contacting support about a delayed phone delivery, why am I rehashing the same story every single time? By now, the bot should already know my order number, delivery status, and perhaps even the mild existential crisis caused by waiting too long.
It’s like going to a party where every time you greet someone, they ask for your name, number, and life story. Really, bots? Haven’t we met before? These repetitive interactions highlight a glaring gap- bots should pick up where we left off, referencing past conversations and jumping straight to the point.
Now, let’s switch gears and talk about shopping- say, buying a shirt for your New Year’s Eve party. Do you really want to spend hours applying filters, scrolling through hundreds of designs, and then wondering, "Will this look good on me? Will my friends like it?"
The new expectation? Simplicity and hyper-personalization. You open the app, mention the party details- location, occasion, and time- and ask for outfit recommendations. The app, already armed with your photo, suggests a curated selection of shirts tailored to your style and the event.
Still not satisfied. No problem- ask for more options, tweak the colors, explore different patterns, and refine the choices until you find the one. And the cherry on top? Expectations are now that AI to place the order autonomously, and it’s delivered to your doorstep in record time.
Below is a well explained small video taken from McKinsey article - LLM to ROI
Retail customer journey before & after Generative AI.
AI-Driven Creativity and Content Creation
Imagine you’re staring at a blank canvas, ready to create something extraordinary. Maybe it’s a visual masterpiece, a compelling story, or a soundtrack for a project. But where do you start? 2024 has changed this significantly for creators like you & me.
This year AI became more than just a tool, it became your Creative Partner.
Visual Arts and Video Creation
Imagine you’re working on a design project, trying to bring a surreal cityscape to life - merging nature and technology in perfect harmony. You type a description into MidJourney, and within moments, breathtaking visuals appear on your screen. You tweak the colors, adjust the details, and suddenly, your idea has transformed into reality.
If video is your medium, tools like RunwayML and Pictory have likely become your go-to assistants. These platforms handle tedious editing tasks, enhance visual effects, and even help craft entire scenes.
With cutting-edge innovations like Google Veo and OpenAI’s Sora, you can now generate real-time visuals that feel as dynamic as your imagination.
These tools empower creators to experiment with cinematic-grade effects and scene generation, reducing development time and costs.
Music and Audio: Composing Your Soundtrack
I am good at writing poetries and always dreamed of composing a piece of music or designing the perfect sound for my project. With AI tools like Suno.com, you can create melodies that match your mood and style. Here is my new year break song for you, enjoy it when you sit and relax at beach with friends and your loved ones.
Writing and Video Scripting
Writing a story, script, or even social media content can sometimes feel overwhelming. But with tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity etc., you have a brainstorming partner. These tools help you generate ideas, refine narratives, and structure your content in a way that resonates with your audience.
Tools like Grammarly keep your language sharp, while Writer AI helps maintain consistency across your project. Instead of stressing over details, you can focus on bringing your story to life.
OpenAI’s Sora also supports previsualization and storyboarding, helping you transform concepts into captivating visual narratives.
A Collaborative Revolution
What makes 2024 truly remarkable is how AI enables you to collaborate across creative disciplines. Your designs can inspire a filmmaker’s visuals, your music can enhance a writer’s story, and your virtual worlds can set the stage for something extraordinary. AI bridges gap and brings creators together in ways never before possible.
Here is how YouTube is partnering with renowned creative artists Partnering with Creative Artists Agency on responsible AI tools for talent - YouTube Blog
Are we closer to Artificial General Intelligence?
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) represents the concept of machines reaching human-level intelligence, enabling them to understand, learn, and apply knowledge autonomously across diverse tasks. The Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) is a unique benchmark designed to measure AI skill acquisition and track progress towards achieving human-level AI. Introduced in 2019 by Fran?ois Chollet, a software engineer and AI researcher at Google.
ARC can be seen as a general artificial intelligence benchmark, as a program synthesis benchmark, or as a psychometric intelligence test. It is targeted at both humans and artificially intelligent systems that aim at emulating a human-like form of general fluid intelligence.
OpenAI's o3 model has achieved a remarkable 87.5% score on the ARC-AGI benchmark, surpassing human performance benchmarked at 85%.
What does this mean for humans?
This represents a significant leap in AI capabilities, as the ARC-AGI benchmark is specifically designed to test genuine intelligence, including the ability to recognize patterns in novel situations and adapt knowledge to unfamiliar challenges.
There are active discussions and efforts on both sides of the spectrum. On one hand, this breakthrough is hailed as a step toward enabling greater opportunities for autonomous decision-making by AI systems. On the other hand, it has prompted initiatives to raise the benchmark even higher. While the financial costs of achieving tasks that surpass human intelligence remain substantial, concerns are growing over the potential risks to jobs and employment.
Not only the O3 model, but there are also rapid advancements occurring in other areas that represent significant milestones in Generative AI, if not in AGI. These developments are worth mentioning.
Agentic AI
The development of agentic AI marks a shift from reactive to proactive AI systems. These advanced systems can exhibit autonomy, set goals, and act independently to achieve objectives without direct human intervention. Mimicking human-like decision-making and problem-solving abilities Agentic AI systems will be focus of development next year as well.
82% of companies plan to integrate AI agents within the next 1-3 years, according to a July 2024 Capgemini report.
Multimodal AI
Advancements in multimodal AI allow systems to process and understand multiple types of input, such as text, images, and audio simultaneously. This capability brings AI closer to human-like perception and reasoning, enabling more comprehensive understanding and interaction with the world.
Google Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental is particularly noteworthy in this area. It can utilize voice, video, and even your screen to provide real-time display. You can expect output in both audio and text formats.
At the same time, Gemini is also offering enhanced capabilities to interact with maps, spatial understanding of objects, and video analyzers. These features are worth exploring and can serve more real-world use cases, such as live troubleshooting of problems.
Conclusion
As we close out 2024, it’s evident that Generative AI has transcended the realm of experimentation to become a transformative force across industries and creative domains.
From hyper-personalized experiences and revolutionary tools for creators to breakthroughs in Artificial General Intelligence and agentic AI, the advancements this year have been groundbreaking. These technologies are not just reshaping how we interact with the world but also redefining human potential by empowering creativity, enhancing productivity, and bridging gaps in communication and understanding.
As we look to enter in year 2025, the question isn’t just about what AI can do but how we can harness its capabilities responsibly and collaboratively to build a more innovative, inclusive, and enriched world.
Here’s to another year of incredible possibilities!
Credits & Key References
This article has been enriched by insights and data gathered from a wide range of reputable online resources and publications. The objective of this article is to spread awareness and education in rapidly evolving space of Generative AI. A special thanks to all these sources for their invaluable contributions to understanding the evolving landscape of Generative AI
Lead Business Consultant at Allianz Services SASM, PSM l certified, PMI ACP and CBAP trained, ,ABAC claims certified
2 个月Really nice and well structured
Associate Project Director at eBaoTech | Cloud Technology | Pursuing - PhD at JNTUA
2 个月This is a really interesting article and comprehensively lays out the advancements in generative AI throughout 2024. The mind-boggling stat about AI companies nearly doubling since 2017 truly highlights the explosive growth of this field! It's so cool how AI is becoming a creative partner! Imagine using tools like Midjourney or RunwayML to easily bring your wildest ideas to life – that's truly mind-blowing. But we also need to be smart about how we use AI. Things like job losses and unfair biases are real concerns, but people should know that AI is only a tool to enhance our productivity and not a threat. in short "The brush was the tool of the past; the prompt is the tool of the future. Great art lies in how we wield it." See what DallE created based on this quote.