Mistral vs. Silicon Valley: Is Europe Closing the AI Innovation Gap?

Welcome, AI entrepreneurs & enthusiasts.

From outperforming top models to offering cutting-edge features for free, Mistral continues to make bold moves.

Could the French startup's latest open powerhouse release mark the beginning of an AI power shift away from Silicon Valley? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI news:

• Mistral’s new multimodal powerhouse
• Perplexity launches AI-powered shopping
• ChatGPT outperforms doctors in diagnostic challenge
• More AI & tech news

Mistral’s new multimodal powerhouse

The News: French AI startup Mistral just released Pixtral Large, a 124B parameter multimodal model that marks the company’s most advanced AI system yet — also transforming its Le Chat platform into a comprehensive workspace rival.

The details:

• Pixtral Large outperforms top models on math reasoning and real-world tasks, also beating Gemini 1.5 Pro and GPT-4o on chart and document understanding.
• The model features a 128K context window capable of simultaneously processing 30 high-res images or a 300-page book.
• Mistral’s Le Chat platform gains new features, such as web search, document analysis, and image generation (powered by Black Forest Labs’ Flux Pro).
• A new Canvas feature enables real-time content creation and editing, similar to recent releases from OpenAI and Anthropic.
• The model is available under research and commercial licenses, while Le Chat's new features are free during beta.

Why it matters: Mistral's release shows just how narrow the gap between open and closed AI models is getting. While U.S. companies have dominated the space, Mistral's emergence as Europe's AI champion — while offering freely accessible state-of-the-art capabilities — could signal a potentially major shift in the industry's competitive landscape.

Perplexity launches AI-powered shopping

The News: Perplexity just introduced a new shopping experience for its Pro users in the United States, allowing users to leverage AI to research, identify, and buy products directly on the platform.

The details:

• The system goes beyond basic product search, understanding complex queries like "stuff I need for a disco party" and providing curated recommendations.
• Pro subscribers get a "Buy with Pro" feature with free shipping, allowing one-click purchases without leaving Perplexity's interface.
• A new "Snap to Shop" tool lets users photograph real-world items and instantly find them online.
• Unlike traditional e-commerce sites, recommendations are currently unsponsored and driven purely by AI analysis of product information.

Why it matters: AI has already been infused into the search giants, but this move is a direct shot at users' traditional process when researching a product to buy. As we’ve seen with search engines, the challenge will be maintaining truly unbiased recommendations and avoiding the commercial allure of ads.

ChatGPT outperforms doctors in diagnostic challenge

The News: A new study from the UVA Health System revealed that ChatGPT-4 achieved significantly better diagnostic accuracy than physicians working alone or with AI assistance, challenging assumptions about how AI tools should integrate into medical practice.

The details:

• The study tested 50 physicians across multiple hospitals, with each doctor given an hour to provide diagnoses and explanations for several case studies.
• The AI scored 90% accuracy on complex medical cases, while doctors using ChatGPT scored 76%, and those without AI scored 74%.
• The study noted that many doctors didn't utilize the AI's full capabilities, treating it more like a search engine than a diagnostic partner.
• Researchers also found doctors often dismissed ChatGPT's suggestions when they conflicted with the physicians' initial diagnoses.

Why it matters: This study challenges assumptions about AI as just a helper tool for doctors. An older GPT-4 model outperforming physicians (even those using AI) suggests we need to rethink how the tech is integrated into medical practice and effectively teach doctors (and others) to collaborate with a powerful new diagnostic partner.

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QUICK HITS

ElevenLabs debuted customizable conversational AI agents on its developer platform, allowing users to build voice-enabled bots with flexible language models and knowledge bases.

Microsoft unveiled?BiomedParse, a GPT-4-powered AI system capable of analyzing medical imagery to identify various conditions, from tumors to COVID-19 infections, through simple text prompts.

The National Institutes of Health introduced TrialGPT, an AI algorithm that matches patients to clinical trials with the same accuracy as human clinicians, reducing screening time by 50%.

Google.org launched a $20M funding initiative to accelerate AI-driven scientific breakthroughs, offering academic and nonprofit organizations cloud credits and technical support.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is joining San Francisco mayor-elect Daniel Lurie's transition team as a co-chair, signaling the new administration's push to strengthen ties with the tech industry.

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