AI’s on the prize...
THE BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY IN WORLD OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HEATS UP
IF 2023 was the year that artificial intelligence (AI) made its breakthrough into humanity’s general consciousness, 2024 might be the year it actually starts to be useful and really change the way we work.
Last year’s brouhaha about the AI system built by OpenAI – ChatGPT – focussed on what we all secretly fear will be mankind’s downfall. Machines that are smarter than us.
I’m delighted to say that on all the evidence that I have seen, we’re some distance away from that apocalyptic nightmare.
AI currently is certainly artificial and not all that intelligent.
But things have changed – we’ve had AI assistants like Alexa, Siri, and the Google Assistant for years, but the three systems we’re going to talk about here are the next step down the road Amazon, Apple, and Google started building with those efforts.
Only one of those three has ventured yet into the world of generative AI chatbots — systems you can talk to and ask them to generate text and images, among other things, just by asking in natural English.
Amazon has given us a sneak peek of what’s to come from Alexa, but not yet put it in our hands, while Apple’s big push into AI is rumoured to be imminent.
Google released details of an upgrade and a new name for its AI chatbot last week, so now seems as good a time as any to see where we stand – what these things are, what they can do, and how we might use them.
GOOGLE GEMINI
Google’s AI system and app was called
Bard, but has been renamed Gemini as the latest version of the system rolls out.
Google says the new model behind the system – Ultra 1.0 – is its most powerful yet.
But unfortunately, you’ll have to pay to use it.
Ultra 1.0 powers Gemini Advanced, which is bundled as part of Google One AI upgrade to storage and other benefits.
You can still access Gemini for free, but only using the last generation Pro 1.0.
The Advanced version is designed for highly complex tasks, and will soon be available from within Workspace apps like Gmail and Docs. So you’ll be able to get Gemini to rustle you up a draft email simply by asking it to – you can tell it roughly what you want to say and what tone you would like to adopt, and it’ll come up with usable text. Or you can write the draft and ask Gemini to polish it up or change its tone.
This is where AI is going to most useful in the first instance – anyone who’s ever tried to make a halfway coherent and usable spreadsheet will know what a godsend it will be when you can just ask Gemini to create one for you using natural language.
Gemini can also generate images from text prompts, and even help you write descriptive captions for photos you have taken yourself.
On mobile, Gemini will have an app on Android, and be incorporated in the iOS Google app, too.
■ Cost: Gemini Advanced is available on a two-month free trial currently, but will cost £18.99 a month, along with other Google One benefits, when the trial ends
MICROSOFT COPILOT
Microsoft’s Copilot AI system has just got its own app for Android and iOS, so you can take your searches on the road.
Where it might be more useful, though, is within the Windows ecosystem as a whole. It uses ChatGPT behind the scenes (Microsoft is a big investor in OpenAI).
Like Gemini, you can use it to help kick-start your vision by asking Copilot to do the heavy lifting at the start of a project, as well as getting it to gather information for you and boil it down to the essentials. Limited image generation from text is also possible.
Copilot is also useful as a superpowered search engine within the Edge browser – it’ll do far more then.
Search, using its machine learning to deal with complicated queries.
■ Cost: Copilot is free to use on the app and web, but for more powerful features, and integration into the Microsoft 365 apps, you’ll need Copilot Pro for £19 a month
It was OpenAI that started this new AI fire when ChatGPT captured the public’s imagination last year.
Without that spark, it’s unlikely Google would be as far down the road as it is, with Apple and Amazon scrambling to keep up in the background.
ChatGPT has not stood still, either, adding new features and ways to interact all the time.
So while the core remains the same as Gemini – it’s a generative AI chatbot that can create things from your voice commands – it can also do other things.
You can, for example, kick off a conversation with an image – show it a photo of a broken bike and ask it what’s wrong, or ask it to come up with a recipe for dinner from a photo of the contents of your fridge.
You can also actually speak to it, and it will interact with you.
It’s not standing still, and neither will the others involved in the race to become AI’s number one.
Hang on to your hats, because if you thought 2023 was interesting enough, 2024 is going to be wild.
■ Cost:
ChatGPT is free to use with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 engine, and costs £19.99 a month for access to the latest, most powerful, CPT-4 engine