OpenAI-mer

As the excitement of witnessing Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer in theatres peaks, a new captivating tale emerges — OpenAI-mer, unlike anything ever seen before.

This week brought forth significant developments that pose a threat to OpenAI, with FTC launching an investigation against them, besides Elon Musk revealing xAI, Anthropic surpassing GPT-4, and Google introducing user-friendly Bard upgrades and more.

The company that unleashed the power of AI on everyone is now facing the heat of regulators and its competitors. After playing the devil’s advocate, and tipping off the regulators about the risks of AI, its malevolent plans seem to be backfiring, or working in its favour.

Last week, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI’s activities, mainly over the risks of leaking sensitive data, and personal reputations among others. It also released a document, sharing concerns over its products and services. 

Against the backdrop of regulatory tussle, OpenAI very timely announced a partnership with the Associated Press (AP), the renowned global news agency. With this, OpenAI will have access to AP news stories going back to 1985, and most likely, real-time information in the near future. 

This new development comes at a time when the internet has become an AI dumping ground, and scrapping quality data online has become increasingly cumbersome as many publishers and microblogging platforms are now restricting data access, including the likes of Twitter, Reddit, Stack Overflow and others, who are now chasing the fool’s gold in generative AI. 

The Battle is On 

Last week, Elon Musk unveiled an OpenAI rival — xAI – a separate entity from X Crop that will closely work with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to fast-track AI innovation, and hopefully AGI. Read: Elon’s xAI is here, but y?

While Musk goes all out in his endeavour to surpass OpenAI, Google-backed Anthropic recently launched Claude-2, which seems to be ahead of GPT-4 in various aspects. The model boasts an impressive 71.2 percent score on the Codex HumanEval, up from 56 percent achieved by its previous model, Claude-1.3. In comparison, GPT-4’s score is 4.2 percent lower than Claud-2. 

One notable improvement is Claude-2’s enhanced coding, maths, and reasoning skills. This includes reading PDFs, something that OpenAI’s GPT-based models still struggle with.

Google, on the other hand, has been making significant progress with Bard. The company recently expanded its access to more places, including Brazil and across Europe, alongside adding 40 new languages, including nine Indian languages – Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, and Urdu. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4-powered Bing Chat do offer more languages but lack the controls to engage with Indian languages seamlessly. 

Google is pretty much ahead in this aspect. With its latest updates, users can now not only talk but listen to Bard’s responses, alongside changing the tone and style of Bard’s responses to five different options: simple, short, long, professional or casual.

Catching Up 

For the first time since its launch in November, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has experienced a decline in website visits, suggesting a potential decrease in consumer interest towards the chatbot. This also comes against the backdrop of growing competition and better alternatives. 

According to SimilarWeb, global desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website witnessed a decline of 9.7% in June compared to May, while unique visitors to the website dropped by 5.7%. Additionally, the data reveals an 8.5% decrease in the amount of time visitors spent on the website. Read: The Real Reason Behind ChatGPT User Decline

Maybe it’s time the company released new upgrades or launched GPT-5. 

Top Stories of the Week >>

Sam is Not into AI Anymore 

Sam Altman is not just your typical ChatGPT man. The farsightedness of this investor and tech magnate is probably bringing the Midas touch into whatever he sets his eyes on. Investing in domains that have far-fetched futuristic goals, Altman has a diversified portfolio, betting big on cryptocurrency, longevity research, and the biggest bet of all – energy. 

With Okla going public with AltC, is Altman’s focus on nuclear energy setting his future path for AGI? Read to find out. 

Why China is Killing its Generative AI Ecosystem 

Chinese regulators have finalised unprecedented directives concerning generative AI as part of their efforts to enhance supervision over this rapidly expanding technology. The new regulations make it clear that the existing Chinese laws on cybersecurity, data privacy, etc apply to generative AI as well. 

Moreover, the regulations also include that the companies providing APIs for others to build models will be held responsible for its misuse. Interestingly, this pertains to research and development too, and not just building AI products. 

Read the full story here.

AIM Shots >>

• Twitter recently launched the ‘Creator Ads Revenue Sharing Program’ for creators subscribed to Twitter Blue or Verified Organisations. Will Threads follow suit? Read to find out. 
• Stable Diffusion has unveiled Stable Doodle, a sketch-to-image tool to convert simple drawings into high-quality images.
• Tesla is in talks with the Indian government for an investment proposal to set up a car factory in the subcontinent, with a yearly capacity of up to 500,000 electric vehicles. The starting price of the vehicles is slated to be INR 20 lakh ($24,400.66). 
• Indian IT giant HCL acquired a 100% stake in German autonomous vehicle tech company ASAP Group. 
• Online travel startup ixigo announced that it used OpenAI’s ChatGPT API to build ‘PLAN’, an intelligent trip planner, alongside becoming the first Indian travel company to have ixigo’s plugin for ChatGPT. Read more here. 
• Adobe recently announced that Firefly now supports text prompts in eight Indic languages — Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and others. 
• TCS, in its latest earnings call, said that it is engaged in over 50 generative AI proof of concept (PoC) and pilots and has over 100 opportunities in the pipeline. 
• Wipro plans to invest $1 billion towards the enhancement of AI capabilities within the next three years. It also launched Wipro AI360, a holistic and AI-centric innovation ecosystem aimed at incorporating AI into all internal platforms, tools, and solutions provided to clients. Read more here.