🔥 Everyone Launched AI Everywhere All at Once

The week of March 13-18, 2023 is considered by many to be the most eventful and exciting time in AI to date!

Well-known startups (OpenAI, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney) and tech giants (Microsoft and Google) unveiled what felt like a never-ending list of new AI products, services, and upgrades to some of the world's most popular applications.

So, if you missed the announcements and are wondering what so many are raving about, are feeling lost in the whirlwind of AI news, or just want a recap to share with your network, then this update is for you.

In today’s recap (5 min read time):

• OpenAI Announces the Launches of GPT-4

• Google Announces its List of AI Features

• Microsoft Brings AI to Office Apps

• Midjourney Launches Version 5 (Mj v5) and a Magazine

• Stable Diffusion Launches “Reimagine” Feature

🗞️ Must-Read News Articles and Updates

1. OpenAI Announces the Launch of GPT-4

• This was easily the most talked about launch of the day (and the rest of the week). GPT-4 (or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4) is the 4th generation of OpenAI's GPT language models and the long-awaited follow-up to ChatGPT. Perhaps the most exciting event was the GPT-4 livestream, which demonstrated some of GPT-4's capabilities. During one demo, they took a picture of a crudely drawn mockup for a website, fed the image to GPT-4, and instructed it to write code for the website based on the mockup. Moments later, GPT-4 produced code for a working website based on that crude mockup!

• According to OpenAI, GPT-4 represents an improvement in performance quality over ChatGPT, can accept both images and text as input - known as "multimodality" - and can perform at a "human level" on various professional and academic benchmarks. In additional blog posts, OpenAI announced a list of early GPT-4 adopters, including Khan Academy, Morgan Stanley, Duolingo, and Microsoft.

• Resources: Check out the “Must-See Videos” section below for a link to the developer livestream. You can also find summaries for that week’s top GPT-4 news headlines on AstroFeather - here, here, and here!

2. Google Announces its List of AI Features

• Not to be outdone by OpenAI, Google also unveiled a list of AI features and upgrades. Perhaps the most impactful for Google's billions of users was the list of Generative AI (GenAI) features for its Workspace apps and tools (Gmail, as well as Google Sheets, Docs, and Slides). According to Google, these GenAI upgrades are designed to help users summarize and draft emails, brainstorm ideas, proofread writing, summarize notes, and create presentations from AI-generated images, audio, and video.

• Google also announced several AI-focused healthcare initiatives during its annual health event, The Check Up. Interestingly, Google is building a language model called Med-PaLM 2 that specializes in answering medical questions. According to a company blog post, Med-PaLM 2 can "perform at the level of an expert physician on medical exam questions" and when answering questions from patients and medical professionals. At the same event, Google announced several partnerships with nonprofit groups to ensure access to AI platforms for breast cancer detection and tuberculosis screening.

• Resources: A link to Google’s Workspace announcement is in the “Must-See Videos” section below. You can also find summaries for Google’s announcements on AstroFeather - here, here, and here!

3. Microsoft Brings AI to Office Apps

• Later in the week, Microsoft continued the trend of AI Everywhere All at Once when it unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot - an AI chatbot interface for all Office apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. You can think of Microsoft 365 Copilot as a ChatGPT-like virtual assistant for all common Office apps. According to the company, Copilot helps users draft documents in Word, automatically create slideshows from a draft in PowerPoint, respond to routine mail in Outlook, set up and schedule meetings in Teams, and perform data analysis in Excel using plain English commands rather than complex equations.  

• Resources: A link for Microsoft’s Copilot launch in the “Must-See Videos” section below. You can check out coverage on AstroFeather - here!

4. Midjourney Launches Version 5 (Mj v5) and a Magazine

• AI art creators and enthusiasts rejoiced at the news that Midjourney's long-awaited update, Mj v5, was now available for use. AI art fans took to Twitter to share their first impressions, with some stating that Mj v5 produced shockingly hyper-realistic skin textures and facial features that felt "too perfect". Others also noted Mj v5's ability to generate realistic looking hands. As an aside, AI art generators have historically struggled to produce realistic hands, teeth, and eyes.

  Midjourney also announced the launch of a monthly print magazine, priced at $4 per month, that will feature artwork curated from highly rated images in the Midjourney community, as well as interviews with AI art creators.

• Resources: A link for a review of Midjourney 5 (and launch announcements) is in the “Must-See Videos” section below. Check out AstroFeather for summaries of that week’s top news headlines for Midjourney - here and here!

5. Stable Diffusion Launches “Reimagine” Feature

• Stability AI, the team behind arguably the most widely used AI art generator, Stable Diffusion, closed out the week of big announcements with the launch of its Reimagine feature. Stability AI described Reimagine as a way for users to "generate multiple variations of a single image" without the need for complex prompts and instructions. Stability AI's blog post also demonstrates what users can do with Reimagine, including creating variations of interior designs and fashion looks.

• Resources: Here’s the link to try out the Reimagine feature now! As always, you can find a summary for this event’s headline news story on AstroFeather - here!

📺️ Must-See Videos

Thanks for reading this edition of the AstroFeather newsletter! I can’t express enough how amazing that launch week was! Even Marc Andreessen (famed investor and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz - a16z) tweeted: “I’ve seen some incredible weeks in my life, but this one is up there.”

If you just can’t get enough, be sure to check out the AstroFeather site for daily AI news updates and summaries. There, you’ll be able to find high quality content from a curated list of publishers ranging from well-known organizations like Ars Technica and The New York Times to authoritative blogs like Microsoft’s AI Blog.

See you in the next edition!

Adides Williams (astrofeather.com)