This week's latest generative AI updates - November 19, 2024

Welcome to this week’s SymphonyAI generative AI weekly newsletter summarizing all the important AI industry developments and technology advancements you need to know.

SymphonyAI news?

• Manufacturing—Analyst recognition: SymphonyAI Achieves Industrial Connected Worker Leadership Position ?

• ITSM—Analyst recognition: SymphonyAI Recognized in 2024 Gartner? Magic Quadrant? for AI Applications in IT Service Management ?

• Financial Crime Prevention—Analyst report: AI Adoption Lag Leaves Asian Financial Institutions Vulnerable Amid Rising Financial Crime ?

• Media—Product updates: SymphonyAI Introduces New AI Functionality on the Revedia Platform for Media ??

• Retail—On-demand webinar: Winning the 8% grocery e-commerce opportunity ?

Big tech announcements?

• Google Gemini unexpectedly surges to No. 1 over OpenAI : Google's experimental AI model, Gemini-Exp-1114, has unexpectedly surpassed OpenAI's GPT-4 in benchmark tests, but experts caution that these results may not accurately reflect real-world AI capabilities or safety. ??

• ChatGPT can now read some of your Mac’s desktop apps : ChatGPT's desktop app for macOS can now read code from select developer apps, allowing users to interact with their code directly through the chatbot without copying and pasting, marking a step towards more integrated AI assistance.??

• OpenAI’s take on AI agents could come in January : OpenAI is reportedly planning to launch an AI agent tool called "Operator" as early as January 2025, which could perform tasks directly on a user's computer.?

• The Gemini app is now available on iPhone : Google has launched a dedicated Gemini app for iOS globally, offering text-based prompts in 35 languages and voice conversations in 12 languages, with features including image generation, integration with other Google services, and plans for future collaboration with Apple's Siri. ?

• Accenture, Microsoft, and Avanade are launching a Copilot business transformation practice and investing in new capabilities to help organizations leverage generative AI and Copilot technologies for business reinvention, offering expertise, training, and solutions across various industries and functions.?

Generative AI impact?

• 2025, the year AI agents will integrate into enterprise hierarchies : Experts predict that by 2025, AI agents will become more integrated into enterprise operations, moving beyond simple chatbots to perform complex tasks across various business functions to enhance efficiency and productivity in the workplace. ?

• AI Spending to Exceed a Quarter Trillion Next Year : AI spending by major tech companies is expected to exceed $250 billion in 2025, driven by growing demand and emerging revenue streams in artificial intelligence.?

• IDC's 2024 AI Opportunity Study, commissioned with Microsoft , identifies five major AI trends, including deeper business integration, multimodal and generative AI advancements, a focus on responsible AI, expanded automation capabilities, and increasing demand for AI talent, shaping the future of AI adoption.?

• More on the IDC 2024 report : Companies are rapidly adopting generative AI to improve efficiency and drive innovation, with enterprises and providers developing customized models for specific business needs and industries.?

AI agents: The next wave of AI ?

• AI agents market poised for explosive growth : The AI agents market is projected to grow rapidly from $5.1 billion in 2024 to $47.1 billion in 2030, driven by increasing demand for personalized experiences, improved efficiency, and specialized industry applications.?

• Architecting the data stack for AI agents : As enterprises transition to AI agents for autonomous task execution, they must evolve their data strategies to focus on creating a semantic layer, implementing reinforcement learning, and maintaining robust data quality, governance, and security measures to ensure accurate and responsible agent performance.?

• Multi-agent AI orchestration is advancing but faces challenges with single points of failure, bottlenecks, and potential vulnerabilities in command and control structures.?

• How agentic RAG can be a game-changer for data processing and retrieval : Agentic RAG enhances traditional Retrieval-Augmented Generation by incorporating AI agents to orchestrate multiple data sources and validate retrieved information, improving the accuracy and capabilities of LLM applications.

Application, platform, and model developments?

• Anthropic’s new AI tools promise to simplify prompt writing and boost accuracy by 30% : Anthropic?launched new tools to automate and improve prompt engineering in its developer console, including a "prompt improver" and example management system, which aim to enhance AI application accuracy by up to 30%.?

• Mistral, a French AI startup, has unveiled new AI models and enhanced features for its Le Chat platform, including web search, image processing, and multimodal capabilities, to remain competitive in the AI industry.?

• Perplexity brings ads to its platform : Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, is introducing ads in the U.S., formatted as "sponsored follow-up questions" and positioned alongside answers, with major brands participating?to generate revenue, while maintaining that the AI-generated answers will remain unbiased and objective.?

• Snowflake announcements on Cortex AI and more : At its BUILD conference, Snowflake announced major enhancements to Cortex AI, introduced Snowflake Intelligence for creating data agents, unveiled a managed version of Open Catalog, and improved security features including Leaked Password Protection and a Threat Intelligence Scanner Package.?

• Genspark adds Claude-powered financial reports on demand : Genspark, an AI search engine, has partnered with Anthropic to launch "Distill Web," a new feature that uses Claude AI to generate easy-to-understand financial reports and visualizations for over 300,000 public companies, aiming to make complex financial data more accessible to everyday users. ?

• Mach9 is equipping infrastructure operators with better information : Mach9, a startup founded in 2021, is using AI to convert mobile lidar scans into engineering models, helping infrastructure providers better understand and maintain their assets.?

Funding?

• Here’s the full list of 44 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024: Despite some AI fatigue, venture capital investments in AI companies remain robust, with AI deals accounting for 28% of all venture funding in Q3 2024, including OpenAI's record-breaking $6.6 billion round.?

• AI startup Writer raises $200 million , achieving a $1.9 billion valuation, to expand its enterprise-focused AI platform beyond writing assistance into a comprehensive productivity tool.?

Research?

• Microsoft Research has introduced BitNet a4.8 , a new architecture for one-bit large language models that significantly improves efficiency by combining hybrid quantization and sparsification techniques, resulting in reduced memory usage and increased processing speed while maintaining performance comparable to full-precision models.

Responsible AI and public policy?

• EU AI Act: Everything you need to know: The EU AI Act is a comprehensive, risk-based regulation aimed at fostering innovation in AI while ensuring safety and trust, with tiered requirements for different risk levels of AI applications, specific rules for general-purpose AI models, and a phased implementation schedule starting from August 2024, featuring centralized oversight for powerful AI models and decentralized enforcement for other AI systems.?

• X sues to block California's anti-deepfakes bill : X (formerly Twitter) is suing to block California's new law requiring large online platforms to remove or label AI-generated deepfakes related to elections, arguing that it violates First Amendment rights and could lead to widespread censorship of political speech.?

• OpenAI’s new policy blueprint for AI imagines a role for government : OpenAI has released an AI infrastructure blueprint outlining its vision for American AI development, proposing government involvement in creating AI economic zones, energy infrastructure projects, and international collaboration to compete with China, while also preparing the workforce for AI-related jobs.??

• Sam Altman will co-chair San Francisco mayor-elect Daniel Lurie's transition team , helping guide innovation and strengthen ties with tech leaders to tackle the city’s challenges. ?

• Norwegian startup Factiverse wants to fight disinformation with AI : Factiverse has developed an AI-powered tool for live fact-checking of text, video, and audio content, aiming to combat disinformation and help businesses mitigate reputational risks and legal liabilities. ?

AI in Financial Services?

• Top 10 Banking and Financial Technology Trends That Will Shape 2025 : In 2025, the financial services industry will be shaped by AI advancements, sustainable finance, digital currencies, and emerging technologies, requiring banks to adapt to maintain competitiveness.?

AI in Enterprise IT?

• BCG on AI’s Impact in Asset Management : BCG recommends a three-step approach for asset managers to leverage AI: boost productivity, personalize client engagement, and expand into private markets.