Insider's Edit: Google's VideoPoet and 2024 AI Forecasts

We wish you, our dear readers, a very Happy New Year!

Here are this week's top stories on AI Business:

Google’s VideoPoet: A Multimodal Model that Generates Video, Audio

Google researchers have unveiled a large language model that can accept multimodal inputs – text, images, videos and audio – to generate videos.

Called VideoPoet, it has a decoder-only transformer architecture that is zero-shot, meaning it can create content it has not been trained on. It follows a two-step training process similar to that of LLMs: pretraining and task-specific adaptation. The pretrained LLM becomes the foundation that can be adapted for several video generation tasks, the researchers said.

VideoPoet can perform text-to-video, image-to-video, video stylization, video inpainting and outpainting and video-to-audio generations.

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7 Top AI Companies to Watch in 2024

In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, keeping an eye on the frontrunners becomes essential. The year 2023 saw some major players emerge and established names challenged.

As we march into 2024, a year poised to witness further technological strides, certain AI companies are set to stand out not only for their groundbreaking solutions but also for their approaches toward a smarter future.

Here are AI Business’ top seven up-and-coming AI companies to watch in 2024. They were vetted to ensure they meet our strict criteria: They must be backed by a notable venture capitalist, angel investor or top-tier company; they must have been in operation for at least two years and the management team must have work or educational experience at renowned institutions.

See the list

What’s next for generative AI in 2024?

Industry experts share their forecasts for generative AI:

1. Investments will go to platforms that solve problems: In 2024, the race will focus on getting AI into the platforms that people use rather than creating individual tools that people are expected to tinker with. Across the technology spectrum, from visual communications and design to software coding, the generative AI that wins over users and scales will have to solve real-world problems. For startups, commercially viable use cases will win in the fierce competition for venture funding and will be the platforms to develop the fastest. – Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer, Canva
2. Generative AI will start to be operationalized: Many businesses have seen generative AI as a hot new experimental technology this year. But now that organizations have had time to experiment with its uses, shortcomings and risks, next year, businesses will strive to operationalize it more extensively and infuse generative AI in their business processes, optimizing their generative AI infrastructure and setting foundations for using it effectively long term. A component of these foundations must be a comprehensive integration infrastructure able to link AI functions with traditional systems. Organizations able to infuse AI capabilities into their business processes will outperform their competitors and build sustainable competitive differentiation. – Massimo Pezzini, head of research, Future of the Enterprise, Workato?

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In other news:

The New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft

OpenAI Set to Be Second Most Valuable Startup, After SpaceX

Party Pooper: Airbnb Taps AI to Block Unauthorized New Year's Eve Parties