In 2023, AI captivated the world with its heady progress, be it in large language models, chatbots or protein folding. 

As the year comes to a close, AIM looks back at ten significant developments in AI over as many months. This year has truly been unlike any other for AI. Here are the things that made it special:

ChatGPT Gained 100 Million Weekly Users

Digital Trends/ Analytics India Magazine 

ChatGPT made a debut in November 2022 and quickly gained attention from tech leaders and the public. In January 2023, the chatbot had a monthly active user base of 100 million. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, it now boasts an astounding 100 million weekly users.

Google, feeling concerned that AI could render its search business useless, responded with its AI chatbot Bard, while Microsoft launched Bing Chat. 

GPT-4 makes a splash

Digital Trends/ Analytics India Magazine 

Initially released in March 2023, OpenAI’s GPT-4 LLM is now accessible to the general public through OpenAI’s API and the premium chatbot application ChatGPT Plus.

GPT-4 enhances creativity, visual input, and multimodal context, allowing users to collaborate on artistic tasks like writing, music, and screenplays, surpassing previous models.

Currently behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus paywall, GPT-4 has significantly impacted AI, with Google’s Gemini and others claiming to beat it at most tests a year after its launch, indicating a benchmark that the OpenAI model has set.

It was only in May that ChatGPT’s browsing capabilities were expanded when the Browsing through Bing plugin was announced at the Microsoft Build developer conference. It was a slow rollout until September when it became available to all ChatGPT Plus users.

LLaMA Leak 

In March, Meta’s latest family of large language models, LLaMA, got leaked along with its weights, on 4Chan’s technology board and was available to download through torrents. This accidental unveiling of Meta’s LLM changed the whole open source game as it gave an enormous potent tool in the hands of the open source community in the AI space. 

AI-generated images

Pablo Xavier

In March 2023, a picture of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer jacket, created by Pablo Xavier using AI image generator Midjourney, went viral,  demonstrating the power of AI in deceiving humans. 

This, along with others like Trump’s arrest, underscores the need for increased media literacy about the increasing prevalence of AI-generated images in search results.

A petition begins to sound the alarm

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

In March 2023, tech executives, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, wrote an open letter urging AI labs to pause training for at least six months due to potential risks such as loss of civilization control, human annihilation, and job destruction. 

The letter also included academics and researchers. The letter aims to provide a clearer understanding of the potential risks associated with AI.

Windows gets a new Copilot

Microsoft

Soon after launching Bing Chat at the start of the year, Microsoft introduced Copilot in February 2023,  a far more widespread application of AI in its products, initially for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft integrated Copilot into Word, Teams, and Windows 11, automating tasks like image creation and meeting summarization, demonstrating AI commitment and setting a precedent for Apple.

Academics grapples with AI

Unsplash

In May 2023, a professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce failed an entire class due to students using ChatGPT to write papers, despite no proof. This ignorance led to serious consequences for students. Dr Jared Mumm copied and pasted students’ papers into ChatGPT, asking if it could generate the text. 

ChatGPT answered affirmatively, but it cannot detect AI plagiarism. Reddit users took Dr Mumm’s letter accusing students of cheating and pasted it into ChatGPT, resulting in AI hallucinating and human confusion surrounding its abilities.

Hollywood vs AI

Paul Deetman/Pexels

Artificial intelligence is causing global anxiety, with reports suggesting it could eliminate up to 300 million jobs if left uncontrolled. Hollywood authors went on strike over the use of AI in filmmaking, in September, 2023, but won concessions from studios, including limiting AI content use for training. AI development may continue to impact the industry.

Sam’s sacking saga

OpenAI

The OpenAI board fired CEO Sam Altman in November, leading to employee resignations and Microsoft offering jobs to Altman and other OpenAI employees, causing the company to almost collapse.

Soon, Altman was reinstated and the company got fresh board members. The internet debated if Altman had discovered ethical concerns about AI development, if Project Q* was about to achieve AGI, or if he was just a bad boss.

We may never know the whole truth. But nothing else encapsulated the drama, hysteria, fascination, and conspiracy theories as much as this one did in 2023.

The rise of OpenAI alternatives

After OpenAI, there was a sudden spike in the number of platforms offering foundational models and proprietary chatbots.

Cohere AI: Cohere is a leading AI platform for enterprise, offering ease-of-use, accessibility, and data privacy. It’s cloud-agnostic, accessible through API, and can be deployed on VPC or on-site. Founded by Google Brain alumni, Cohere aims to transform enterprises and their products with AI. Cohere raised $270 million in a funding round led by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, valued at $2.2 billion in June, 2023.

Anthropic: Anthropic is an AI safety and research company working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. In October, 2023 Google committed to investing up to $2 billion in Anthropic, bolstering the competition among startups striving for significant technological breakthroughs.

Mistral AI: Built by a world-class team in Europe, targeting the global market, Mistral AI was founded in April, 2023. In November, 2023, it raised $385 million, in a significant investment in online chatbot technology, valued at around $2 billion, following a sevenfold increase in value in six months.

Perplexity: Perplexity is a chatbot-style search engine that allows users to ask questions in natural language. Founded in August 2022, Perplexity, has raised $500 million, a significant increase from its initial $150 million valuation. It is also in discussions to raise $50 million.