Welcome to the very first edition (and our pilot episode) of What’s New in AI, our weekly update where we bring you all the latest AI news, tools, and tips to help you excel in this new AA-driven future.
AI in the news: The biggest AI developments and news
Let’s start with some of the biggest headlines from last week:
- ChatGPT continues to be the leader in the AI revolution, but it’s still early days and many players are fighting for a piece of the pie. Nearly two weeks ago Amazon announced Olympus, its own plans for an AI engine. Now Tech Spark AI has announced it is working on its own ChatGPT alternative and has acquired $1.4 million in pre-seed funding.
- The two-day Microsoft Ignite event kicked off on November 15 and has seen several key announcements including Microsoft’s plans for new AI-focused chips for use in its data centers, the introduction of a few new tools, and even a rebranding of Bing Chat.
- Continuing our focus on Microsoft, Microsoft CoPilot is the new name for Bing Chat, unifying the chat bot’s name and experience across Bing and Windows, as well as introducing its own dedicated domain at copilot.microsoft.com. Google is also introducing a new program called CoPilot Studio, which we’ll talk more about in the tools and apps section.
- While AI has a lot of potential for great good, it can also be a can of worms when it comes to misinformation. YouTube wants to help prevent potential misinformation by rolling out new rules for AI content, including a requirement that the creator reveal if any generative artificial intelligence was used to make anything realistic that appears in the video or faces a potential ban or suspension. This would not only help protect against deep fakes but also make it clearer when someone is attempting to pass off images and video that they didn’t create directly.
- It was only a matter of time before AI started playing a real influence on politics, for better or worse. Now we’re seeing that start to play out in Argentina. Initially, candidate Sergio Massa used AI to make propaganda images showing him as a figure of unity and power. Shortly after his opponent fired back with his own AI images portraying Massa as a Chinese community leader, and himself as a cuddly lion. The New York Times has an excellent post wrapping up the situation.
- The AI invasion has begun, well at least for weather prediction. A new computer model built by Google DeepMind and powered by artificial intelligence reportedly outperforms traditional weather models, including the gold standard that is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting model. Reportedly it performed better in 90 percent of forecasts with more than 1,300 atmospheric variables in play including humidity and temperature. The new tools not only offer the ability in short 10-day intervals but as far out as a century — all with much better accuracy than our current methods.
- A few weeks ago Google Maps announced a makeover that includes many new AI drive features including AI-powered Maps search and enhanced navigation. These features are now starting to roll out for many users.
- YouTube is rolling out a variety of new features for Premium subscribers, including early access to a new conversational AI bot for select users. For now, this feature remains in beta and will likely roll out to more users as time goes on.
What’s new in AI? This week’s spotlight on AI tools and apps
There are a lot of great AI tools and apps popping up these days for those looking to utilize AI for your personal productivity, as a teacher, as a student, or any personal or professional use case. In this section, we’ll take a look at apps and tools across a variety of platforms including web, PC, and mobile.