AI voice assistants stole the spotlight this week as tech companies made major announcements.
ADVERTISEMENTThis week, artificial intelligence (AI) competitors showed their might with OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind trying to trump the other.
But the impressive updates show how quickly the technology is being deployed, living up to fears previously expressed in an open letter that AI could harm society and should be paused until it be better understood.
Co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI Ilya Sutskever, known for questioning Sam Altman’s ambition to rapidly deploy AI, announced his departure from the start-up on Wednesday.
Monday, OpenAI held its first ever live session and announced its new GPT-4o model, which claims to be “much faster” and improves “text, vision and audio capabilities.”
One version will be free for users, but there is a paid version that will have five times the capacity limits.
The company’s most exciting development is the voice assistant that can generate content or understand voice, text or image commands and perform live translations. It can also react in real time and observe body movements.
But OpenAI didn’t stop there with announcements. On Thursday, the company announced that it had signed a deal for access to Reddit content and would bring AI-powered features to the social media platform.
The same day, Sony sent letters to OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, asking if they had used his songs to develop their AI systems. The letters come as copyright lawsuits against generative AI companies mount.
Google versus OpenAI rivalry
Google also signed a deal with Reddit earlier this year for its AI training data.
Competition between the two companies intensified this week when Google’s DeepMind released updates to its Gemini chatbot, a day after the OpenAI event, which doesn’t seem to be a coincidence.
During Google’s I/O developer conference, a video was shared showing the company’s Gemini chatbot looking at GPT-4o.
Asked by voice command, the Google chatbot was able to attribute quotes to OpenAI speakers and even name them when asked. Both companies showed how voice typing surpasses text typing.
Gemini may also use personal information, such as vacation requests, and use public information to quickly create itineraries.
But that’s not all Google announced. Its search engine is also getting a makeover. Instead of offering the Search Generative Experience (SGE), the AI will generate a summary of their search results.
Not just about OpenAI and Google
While the two AI titans appear to dominate the sector, Anthropic also made announcements this week.
Tuesday, AnthropicArtificial intelligence (AI) assistant Claude has become available in Europe.
Anthropic bills itself as an AI security research company and was founded by former OpenAI executives and researchers. Google and Amazon are also major investors in Anthropic.
“We are extremely excited to launch in Europe as the region is well positioned to harness the benefits of AI,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Euronews Next.
ADVERTISEMENT“Claude has a number of specific characteristics that uphold EU values and address the EU market; we designed Claude to avoid prejudice, discrimination and hate speech; focused on reliable, orientable and accessible AI for all.”
