Weekly AI Roundup: Gemini 2.0 + OpenAI’s 12 Days of Shipmas
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Hello everyone,
This week in AI has been nothing short of extraordinary. The tech giants—Google, OpenAI, and Meta—have been rolling out cutting-edge innovations at a breakneck pace. But stealing the spotlight were Google's big reveals, headlined by the launch of Gemini 2.0, the latest iteration of its powerful multimodal AI model.
Each week, we bring you the most exciting updates from the world of AI, sharing hundreds of fresh insights and breaking news on LinkedIn and our WhatsApp channel. From game-changing innovations to real-world applications and expert perspectives, stay ahead of the curve and explore how AI is shaping the future.
Here’s what’s making waves in AI this week!
? Google has launched Gemini 2.0, its most advanced generative artificial intelligence model yet, marking a shift from information retrieval to action-oriented "agentic" AI – systems that can think, plan, and take action on users' behalf. https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/google-gemini-ai-update-december-2024/
? Google unveiled on Wednesday its first-ever AI agent that can take actions on the web, a research prototype from the company’s DeepMind division called Project Mariner. The Gemini-powered agent takes control of your Chrome browser, moves the cursor on your screen, clicks buttons, and fills out forms, allowing it to use and navigate websites much like a human would. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/11/google-unveils-project-mariner-ai-agents-to-use-the-web-for-you/
? Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, said on Saturday that its new version of the Grok-2 chatbot will be available for free to all users of the social media platform X. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/musks-xai-offers-free-access-grok-2-ai-chatbot-2024-12-14/
? OpenAI is releasing new features and products ahead of the holidays. Fans had hoped the 12-day campaign, which OpenAI is calling "Shipmas," would include an update of its text-to-video AI tool, Sora, as well as other updates to its ChatGPT and o1 models. https://www.businessinsider.com/everything-openai-released-12-days-of-shipmas-sora-o1-2024-12
? For a few hours on Saturday, some users of Elon Musk's X reported having access to Aurora, a new, more photorealistic image generator powered by Musk's artificial intelligence model, Grok. https://www.businessinsider.com/aurora-grok-new-image-generator-twitter-x-elon-musk-ai-2024-12
? OpenAI’s widely-used AI chatbot, ChatGPT, experienced a global outage lasting about three hours. The company has since resolved the issue but the outage which affected more than 75% of its users disrupted many across the globe due to humans' high dependency over AI usage. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/11/chatgpt-and-sora-are-down/
? Microsoft has revealed the newest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Called Phi-4, the model improves in several areas over its predecessors, Microsoft claims, particularly in solving math problems. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/12/microsoft-debuts-phi-4-a-new-generative-ai-model-in-research-preview/
? Anthropic has officially rolled out its Claude 3.5 Haiku model to all users through the Claude chatbot on the web and mobile apps. This smaller, faster model has garnered attention for its ability to outperform larger models on key benchmarks while maintaining a competitive price point. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/12/anthropics-3-5-haiku-model-comes-to-claude-users/
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? YouTube has rolled out a new AI-powered dubbing feature that automatically translates and dubs videos into multiple languages. https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/10/24318309/youtube-partners-ai-auto-dubbing-translation-knowledge-information-videos
? In what it hopes will be a meaningful contribution to the fight against deepfakes, Meta is releasing a tool to apply imperceptible watermarks to AI-generated video clips. Announced on Thursday, the tool, called Meta Video Seal, is available in open source and designed to be integrated into existing software. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/12/meta-releases-a-tool-for-watermarking-ai-generated-videos/
? Reddit is launching a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers to help you more easily find information on the platform. The tool, similar to other AI search products, responds to queries by generating well-formatted responses and showing links to its sources. https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/9/24314445/reddit-answers-ai-powered-search-tool
? Nvidia opens new tab has added about 200 people in China this year to enhance its research capabilities and focus on new autonomous driving technologies. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/nvidia-steps-up-hiring-china-focus-ai-driven-cars-bloomberg-news-reports-2024-12-12/
? OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said it’s reasonable to eventually charge business users thousands of dollars a month for its artificial intelligence software to better reflect the value the technology provides to companies. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-10/openai-cfo-thinks-business-users-will-pay-thousands-for-ai-software?embedded-checkout=true
? Manchester City is holding a competition that asks fans to generate its future kit design with AI. Players will wear the winning design during the 2026-2027 season as City’s official third kit, and it will even be sold to fans. https://www.mancity.com/news/club/puma-ai-kit-creator-launch-63869006
? Harvard University, in conjunction with Google, has released a dataset of a million public domain books to train the next generation of AI. https://www.wired.com/story/harvard-ai-training-dataset-openai-microsoft/
? Apple is reportedly working with chip giant Broadcom to develop a custom server processor to power the AI services and features built into its operating systems. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/11/apple-reportedly-developing-ai-server-chip-with-broadcom/
? Using generative artificial intelligence, a team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has converted sounds from audio recordings into street-view images. https://news.utexas.edu/2024/11/27/researchers-use-ai-to-turn-sound-recordings-into-accurate-street-images/
Stay curious, stay ahead!
Until next time,