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Daily Digest: Google products get AI glow up

But talent's leaving, when Microsoft is building more teams.

January 24, 2024

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here’s what we have today;

PICKS

  1. Guess what’s latest on Chrome? Easy, it’s AI. With the new Chrome release (M121), Google’s stepping up its game with three new AI-powered features. And since it’s Google, these are experimental/coming soon.🍿Our Summary (also below)

  2. Google also adds its AI to search ads (US and UK beta). You can create ad copy, images and keywords with just your website URL. And it has cancelled its contract with Appen. Appen was one of the key providers of labelled data that helped train Google’s AI models. 30% of Appen’s revenue was from this contract with Google.

  3. Microsoft's latest strategy in the AI game is small models. Meet their new GenAI team that’ll focus on developing smaller, more efficient AI models. At WEF, Satya Nadella (Microsoft’s CEO) mentioned the work on small models as “controlling our own destiny.”🍿Our Summary (also below)

  4. Uncharted Labs is the new AI startup from former Google DeepMind staff. Three researchers from the team building Google’s AI models, Google DeepMind, have decided to do their own thing. They are joining the ever-increasing number of AI researchers who are moving out of Google.🍿Our Summary

TOP TOOLS

  • TechInterviewer - A way to completely simulate interviews.

  • Dubbing Studio by Eleven Labs - Precise control when translating your videos for global audiences.

  • PDF to Chat - AI chat with your PDFs, 100% free and open source.

  • Norm AI - Regulatory AI agents that understand rules and your business. (blog)

  • VectorShift - No-code, low-code, and out-of-the-box generative AI solutions to build AI assistants.

  • Brainner - Analyze hundreds of resumes in minutes.

  • Keep it shot - Rename and index your screenshots on mac using GPT-4 Vision.

  • Recraft - Create visually consistent graphics.

  • Nlux - Open source JS library to create AI interfaces.

NEWS

Unclassifieds - short, sponsored links

QUICK BITES

Guess what’s latest on Chrome? Easy, it’s AI. With the new Chrome release (M121), Google’s stepping up its game with some fresh AI-powered features.

What is going on here?

Chrome's getting pumped with new AI features.

What does this mean?

Chrome's rolling out three AI features.

  • First, there's the Tab Organizer: Forget the hassle of sorting tabs; Chrome’s got you sorted with automatic smart groupings and even suggests names and emojis for easy identification. Tab organizer uses the page titles and URLs of open tabs in the active window to do this.

  • Next, AI-generated themes: Create your own vibe with generative AI wallpapers. Choose your mood, style, color, and subject, and voila – a personalized theme just for you. There’s no prompting, so the customization is still limited.

  • Help me write: The third feature is not there yet in Chrome. But we’ve seen this one. Right-click and select “help me write” to use AI to write. Just that it’ll work on every text-box on Chrome.

Why should I care?

Big disclaimer: these are experimental features in US only. Google says it’ll come to everyone soon but just FYI. Let’s be honest, themes are meh. Help me write could be useful but depends on the model behind it (likely to be Gemini Pro—equivalent to GPT-3.5). The tab grouping feature stands out the most for me, and I hope it is as good as in the demo.

QUICK BITES

Microsoft's latest strategy in the AI game is small models. Meet their new GenAI team that’ll focus on developing smaller, more efficient AI models. At WEF, Satya Nadella (Microsoft’s CEO) mentioned the work on small models as “controlling our own destiny.”

What is going on here?

Microsoft is focusing on small language models (SLMs) to cut down costs and computing power.

What does this mean?

Microsoft has been big on AI, especially with their heavy investment in OpenAI. But we all know, GPT-4’s too power-hungry. So now, Microsoft is creating this new team to make AI more economical. They've pulled in their top AI brains from research teams into a GenAI team to develop these SLMs, including leading researcher Sébastien Bubeck.

The GenAI team is different from Microsoft’s Turing team which focuses on making larger models. GenAI is led by Corporate Vice President Misha Bilenko and answers to Kevin Scott, the CTO.

Why should I care?

These SLMs are nifty because, with some optimizations and a narrow application range, they can do much of what the larger models do but on a diet of less computing juice. Microsoft’s Phi models, its attempt at SLMs, has gained much attention among companies and fine-tuning hackers. The Phi series of models is already being tested by Goldman Sachs. Nice, coz I’m all in for AI to become more accessible and cheaper to run for us all.

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