2024: An AI Odyssey
A Year in Review and Anticipating GenAI Trends in 2024
With 2023 behind us, it's time to reflect on a year that was nothing short of a whirlwind, especially in the realms of AI and technology. My journey through this landscape has been both personal and professional, and I'm excited to share these insights as we step into 2024.
2023 - A Year of Change and Exploration
My fascination with AI began in a year marked by significant transitions. After a decade in advertising with InMobi & Glance, I embraced a sabbatical, traveling from the Canadian Rockies to Boulder and Mexico City. This time away provided me with a valuable perspective and much needed calm, preparing me to delve into new ventures.
I had always been curious about GenAI and was sure this was like the mobile revolution of 2009, and I wanted to get deeper into the field. So, I started reading all the articles that I could lay my hand on. But I needed help understanding the landscape; there seemed to be no good way to understand the value chain and key players in it. In all my years at InMobi, I always turned to Lumascapes whenever I had any such questions and started looking for something similar in GenAI. While I found some great market maps from Sequoia, Foundation Capital, and Bessemer Ventures, they needed more information about the key players.
From Learning to Sharing: The Birth of a Newsletter
I started scoping out the GenAI landscape and the companies in it. These efforts culminated in the creation of a weekly newsletter. I learned many exciting things as I delved into different parts of the value chain, which resulted in many posts ranging from AI efforts at tech giants to the Climate impact of AI. The year-end State of the Union post featuring the simple market map I sought was a significant milestone in this endeavor.
Predictions for 2024: A Shift in Focus
As we usher in 2024, I anticipate several key trends in the AI industry:
The focus will move to smaller models. 2023 saw the size of the models scale exponentially. But getting into 2024, small expert models that can be hosted on devices will get more critical. Google has Gemini Nano; Apple announced LLM in a flash. Come October, we will likely see Apple release a wearable device, glasses, with some slick features akin to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses or Humane’s AI Pin.
The application layer will see some breakthrough companies start emerging. 2023 was the year of the foundational models. Companies building the best models got the most funding, and every tech giant released a foundational model. But as the year progresses, the focus and investment will move towards breakthrough applications that will start emerging.
Creative awards in Movies, Music, Art, and Photography will include AI-generated content categories. At the Sony World Photography Awards in 2023, a Berlin-based artist, Boris Eldagsen, was declared the overall winner in the creative category for his image Electrician. Eldagsen declined to accept the prize after noting that he created the image with the help of AI image generators. He chronicled the entire experience here. Are you ready for an AI-generated short film yet?
Boris Eldagsen, “PSEUDOMNESIA | The Electrician”. Source: eldagsen.com Business models will evolve, and advertising will become the supplementary business model. GenAI businesses in 2023 benefited from the euphoria and paranoia of companies to test out GenAI for their business or life. In 2024, all these subscribers will ask the dreaded ROI question, scrapping many AI budgets. The GenAI businesses must find other ways to keep the lights running - enter advertising! Multiple years in advertising taught me how every business loves ads; take marketplaces, for example. We've seen this game play out in other subscription businesses, like Netflix.
Personal Assistants will be a part of our daily lives. Throughout 2023, there was an increased reliance on GenAI for writing many things - School reports, Resumés, LinkedIn posts, and Performance Reviews. In 2024, expect everyone to have an AI-powered personal assistant. Instead of multiple apps to book a cab, check the weather, or find a gift - an assistant on your phone to which you could dictate these tasks in your language of choice. Like a 'Hey Siri', but very powerful. A powerful AI platform at your fingertips is the vision I was helping build at my previous employer, Glance, which, with GenAI, can convert phones into the assistants we all deserve.
M&As are coming, with tech giants having to stay out of it. Many companies started in 2023; many raised enormous amounts of money at even more insane valuations. All some businesses have are fleeting arbitrage opportunities. There isn't another funding round available for these businesses. If they don't change something fundamentally, I expect them to have to find buyers. There have been countless rumors about Stability AI being in troubled waters, and recently, Anand Sanwal from CB Insights predicted that Anthropic would buy Stability. Only time will tell which deals get done, but one segment will find it hard to participate in this M&A wave - the tech giants. They have been under significant FTC scrutiny and will unlikely be allowed to move ahead with any significant GenAI M&A, no matter what they do.
As these trends unfold, I invite you to share your predictions and join me in exploring what 2024 has in store for the world of GenAI.