Welcome to The Week in Generative AI, a weekly column for marketers from Quad Insights that quickly sums up need-to-know developments surrounding this rapidly evolving technology.
Meta reportedly developing new AI model
Deepa Seetharaman and Tom Dotan write in The Wall Street Journal that Meta “is working on a new artificial-intelligence system intended to be as powerful as the most advanced model offered by OpenAI.”
This new AI language model aims to be more powerful than its predecessor, Llama 2. The initiative seeks to establish Meta as a leading player in AI, where it lags behind its competitors. Unlike its partnership with Microsoft for Llama 2, Meta plans to use its own infrastructure for training the new model in early 2024, using advanced Nvidia H100 chips.
“Large language models generally get more powerful when trained on more data,” Seetharaman and Dotan explain. “The most powerful version of the Llama 2 model that Meta announced in July was trained on 70 billion parameters, a term for the variables in an AI system that is used to measure size.” For reference, estimates place OpenAI’s ChatGPT LLM training intake at 1.5 trillion parameters, so Meta has some catching up to do.
Related coverage:
• “Meta sets GPT-4 as the bar for its next AI model, says a new report” (The Verge)
AI meeting on Capitol Hill
In a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting on Wednesday organized by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, top tech executives from companies including Meta, Google, OpenAI and Tesla convened to discuss the future of artificial intelligence regulation. Ideas floated reportedly included the creation of an independent agency to oversee AI.
Fortune’s Mary Clare Jalonick points to general skepticism regarding such regulation, given that “Congress has a lackluster track record when it comes to regulating new technology, and the industry has grown mostly unchecked by government in the past several decades. Many lawmakers point to the failure to pass any legislation surrounding social media, such as for stricter privacy standards.”
Related coverage:
• “Musk, other tech giants agree legislation needed to regulate AI” (Axios)
• “8 More Companies Pledge to Make A.I. Safe, White House Says” (The New York Times)
• “Tech leaders including Musk, Zuckerberg call for government action on AI” (The Washington Post)
Adobe’s generative AI tools out of beta
Adobe’s Firefly generative AI model, which until now had been in beta release, is now live across multiple platforms, offering advanced features such as vector recoloring in Illustrator and Generative Fill in Photoshop. For businesses, Adobe Firefly for Enterprise claims to provide a commercially safe generative AI model trained on Adobe Stock and public domain content, with options for brand-specific content customizations.
A standalone Firefly web app is also in the works. The technology comes with built-in ethical safeguards, attaching what Adobe calls a “Content Credentials” digital label to each asset generated to ensure authenticity and responsible use, which The Verge’s Jess Weatherbed says is intended to serve as a “a digital ‘nutrition label’ backed by the Content Authenticity Initiative that attaches attribution metadata and identifies an image as being AI-generated.”
Additionally, Adobe introduced a credit-based system for user access, with paid Creative Cloud plans that include a monthly allocation of “Generative Credits,” with extra credits available for purchase starting at $4.99.
Related news:
• “Photoshop’s Firefly Generative AI Arrives With a Creative Cloud Price Hike” (CNET)
Further reading
• “Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water” (The Associated Press)
• “AI robots went to Dolphins-Chargers game and freaked out everyone” (SBNation)
• “Google Nears Release of Gemini AI to Challenge OpenAI” (The Information)
• “Coca-Cola reveals AI-inspired drink for latest ‘Creations’ play” (Ad Age)
• “Bing, Bard, and ChatGPT: How AI is rewriting the internet” (The Verge)
• “M.B.A. Students vs. ChatGPT: Who Comes Up With More Innovative Ideas?” (The Wall Street Journal)
• “Salesforce embeds conversational AI across the platform with Einstein Copilot” (TechCrunch)
• “AI expert is a hot new position in the freelance jobs market” (CNBC)
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week.
If you’d like to catch up on prior installments of this column, start by heading to last week’s recap: “The Week in Generative AI: September 8, 2023 edition”
