Big Tech's Hard Pivot to GenAI Accelerates
Amazon - a company that made precisely zero mention of AI on an earnings call two months ago - is catching up.
Happy Friday everyone!
One of my key predictions for 2023 was that all the big tech companies would pivot hard to GenAI, and hard pivoting they have been! Let's recap what the Big Five are up to:
Microsoft kicked it off with a $10bn investment into OpenAI hot off the heels of ChatGPT’s enormous success. Remember, ChatGPT is the most popular application of all time, reaching 100 million users within two months. OpenAI, until recently, was something that only resonated with the AI-literati, but now averages over a billion visits a month.
Google, not to be outdone, and goaded by Satya Nadella to come ‘dance’ in the ChatBot wars, announced their version of ChatGTP - BARD. To hedge its bets, Google also invested $300m into Antrophic, a company founded by ex-Open AI employees to develop LLMs (and other generative models) to rival Open AI’s dominance.
Meta has left the Metaverse in the dust, working furiously instead with its new ‘Generative AI unit,’ to figure out the future of AI-generated ads (lawd, help us). It’s also been working on its own foundational models like LLaMA — its own (open-sourced) large language model. Only last week, it also released SaM (Segment Anything Model), the first Foundational Model that can segment or ‘cut out’ any part of an image. Can you imagine how this could be utilized on Instagram?
This week, however, it’s all been about AMAZON… I’ve already covered how Amazon’s AWS has teamed up with Hugging Face in previous issues of EGAI. Yesterday, it launched Bedrock, a new platform for ‘building and scaling’ generative AI applications. Bedrock will allow businesses to access and use generative models with their data.
“Most companies want to use these large language models, but the really good ones take billions of dollars to train and many years and most companies don’t want to go through that,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC on Thursday. “So what they want to do is they want to work off of a foundational model that’s big and great already and then have the ability to customize it for their own purposes. And that’s what Bedrock is.”
Apart from Bedrock, Amazon also released CodeWhisperer, its own version of Co-Pilot, the software jointly developed by OpenAI and Github to generate code. Quite a pivot for a company that made zero mentions of ‘AI’ on an earnings call only two months ago.
Apple is still noticeably absent when it comes to ‘big public plays’. I’ve been commenting on this since last year, but as previously mentioned, I don’t think Tim Cook & Co are asleep at the wheel here. All I can think of is a dozen idioms to insert here, like ‘they who laugh last laugh longest’ and ‘still waters run deep.’ Eh, you get my point. I am still betting on a mega reveal from Apple at some point — Tim, we’re waiting for your mic drop moment.
Three more things to mention here:
Not only is all big tech pivoting hard to GenAI, but they are also racing to develop the models, platforms, and software that will help them tap into the massive business utility of Generative AI.
The launch of Bedrock indicates the growing understanding that enterprise clients will need to access base generative models and to be able to fine-tune them with their data. They will need to do so without compromising enterprise data. (Lawyers and data protection officers, you know you’ll be busy!)
The speed at which the entire ecosystem adopts Generative AI as a new layer for enterprise productivity is another data point to demonstrate not only the scale but the pace at which this revolution is unfolding. It's crazy to think this has all happened in the last four months. Whilst I believe that all AI researchers (and the big tech companies) knew that Generative AI had potentially transformative potential, I think even they have been taken off guard at just how quickly the change is coming — and how ‘big’ the change really is.
Hold on tight, folks! We're still only at the beginning of this exciting journey. Speaking of which, I am thrilled to announce that I have released an amazing PIONEER interview that I highly recommend. It's with David Foster, the man who literally wrote the book on Generative Deep Learning. This is the 101 I promised you: what is Generative AI, how did we get here, and what can we expect next?
The best thing about speaking to David, apart from tapping into his incredible wealth of knowledge, is that he can explain it all in an understandable way. It's truly a gift! Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to learn from one of the most knowledgeable experts in the field. You can access the interview here:
Meanwhile, here is the best of the rest:
Elon Musk’s new GenAI project at Twitter
Elon doesn’t want to be left behind! Musk is moving forward with a generative AI project at Twitter, despite having signed an open letter calling for an industry-wide halt to AI training for several months.
The Tesla billionaire recently bought 10,000 GPUs for the platform – indicating a serious commitment to the project.
How Twitter will use generative AI remains unclear, but one of the possible uses could be for advertising and improving search.
AI-Music: Streaming Services Urged To Tighten Their Belts
Universal Music Group (UMG) has called on music streaming services like Spotify and Apple to prevent AI services from using copyrighted material without permission.
UMG – controlling roughly a third of the global market – is increasingly concerned about AI bots using copyrighted songs to train themselves to generate new music imitating popular artists.
UMG has asked streaming companies to block access to their music catalogues for developers using them to train AI.
OpenAI gears up for Japan expansion post meeting with Prime Minister
Open AI has already become a geopolitical force. After a month of bad news for the company in Europe — ChatGPT was temporarily banned in Italy, and other European regulators started announcing more scrutiny on the ChatBot, Open AI sets its sights on ‘new markets.’
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to expand the organisation's presence in Japan after meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Anyway that’s all for now,
Enjoy the weekend. See you next week!
Namaste,
Nina