AI has been the word of the year. Even the legacy magazine TIME has not been able to overlook the impact of the technology leading it to adding it to its list of best inventions of 2023. The technology has managed to seep into every nook and cranny of our lives, from educational institutions to government departments. 

From the 14 inventions TIME enlisted, we’ve picked out the best of the lot. Here’s are 8 best AI inventions that have managed to leave a mark in the constantly evolving industry:  

Adobe Photoshop Generative Expand and Generative Fill

In May, amid the fake AI image frenzy, Adobe introduced Generative Fill in Photoshop, a feature which brings generative AI-powered Firefly directly into the hands of designers.

The technology had already wooed the world. And though Adobe was not the first to bring the text-to-image technology, but it managed to take advantage of its existing user base of over 30 million creators. 

Since its release, Generative Fill has evolved and integrated in most aspects of Adobe, from Creative Cloud to GenStudio for enterprise customers. 

AI Wildfire Detector

AI is trying to be used in every area one can think of today – including putting out a fire before it explodes. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announced the AI-powered Wildfire Detector to upgrade firefighters’ abilities to validate situational awareness and respond quickly. 

The department, along with the University of California at San Diego’s Alert California program and its network of more than 1,000 cameras across the state, is using the technology to spot fires early which have been getting worse with each passing year. 

Gen-2

Built upon the diffusion architecture by Runway, a well-funded startup, Gen 2 has often been called ‘pivotal’ in terms of AI video generation and editing. 

Released in March 2023, Gen-2 improved on its preceding Gen-1 model allowing users to generate new four-second-long videos from scratch through prompting its proprietary AI model. Users also had the option to upload images to which Gen-2 could add motion. 

The update in September introduced a ‘Director’s mode’ for users to create visuals by choosing the direction and speed of the movement in their Runway generated clips. More recently, the model has had major improvements to both its fidelity and consistency of results. 

City-Wide Drone Detection

Launched in April by Dedrone, the detection system is the largest airspace security infrastructure in the world. The system is available across 40 cities in the West in their Security Operating Center (SOC) or on their phone without any hardware installation. 

The network of services is completely cloud based, available on the web as well as the stores on Android and iOS. The system’s database of drone information covers three years and over 240 million drone detections’ worth of drone behaviour, including FAA violations.

GPT-4

The long-awaited GPT-4 is not unknown to anyone on the internet. The AI model powering OpenAI’s paid version of ChatGPT, became the talk of the tech town for all the reasons right and wrong. 

While the model surpassed its predecessor and other language models available in the zone, it was highly criticised for the lack of information available about its architecture, dataset, and training process. 

As Sam Altman’s brainchild is nearing its first conference, Dev Day, leaks surfacing the internet point towards an incoming advanced GPT-4 for enterprise users.  

SeamlessM4T

One major factor lagging in AI research is the diversity and availability of models in several languages. Taking a step forward, tech giant Meta open-sourced SeamlessM4T — Massively Multilingual & Multimodal Machine Translation model.

The translation and transcription all-in-one model facilitates input and output in 100 languages and speech output in 35 languages (including English). 

TrailGuard AI

The invention by Resolve, is one of the pieces of technology saving nature one algorithm at a time. The AI-enabled security system is an anti-poaching solution in action to detect poachers and alert park managers in near-real time.

The not-for-profit organisation partnered with Steve Gulick (a conservation technologist) and Intel to develop this cryptic anti-poaching camera-based alert system to prevent animals from being poached. 

Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

The oldest digital library in the world, Project Gutenberg transformed over 5,000 ebooks into audiobooks through synthetic speech technology. The audiobooks, made possible through a collaboration with Microsoft and MIT, are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

The project bypassed the lengthy and expensive process of hiring a human reader to do the job. While the  overnight success made it to the top AI innovations list, It’s exactly the kind of AI application that actors were striking against in the US.