New York Times sues OpenAI

Happy new year, ya filthy animals.

And welcome to the 668 new subscribers who joined during this holiday season. I’m excited that you are here to learn with me.

Here’s what’s brewing in AI this week:

• NYT’s copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft
• 3 big ideas for AI in 2024
• Trending GPTs
• A recap of the most important news in AI these last 2 weeks

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Dario’s Picks

I. New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for billions

It’s happening, after threats of lawsuits, the New York times is now suing OpenAI and Microsoft for “billions” over copyright infringement. The publisher claims millions of their articles were used to train ChatGPT and Copilot.

We’ve seen how recently OpenAI has partnered with publisher Axel Springer. The New York times allegedly reached out to OpenAI in April trying a strike an “amicable resolution”, but were refused.

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Why it matters: It’s likely to be a precedence-setting case. It’s the first time a media company of this size sues an AI platform. According to Cecilia Ziniti, IP and AI lawyer, it’s the “the best case yet alleging that generative AI is copyright infringement”.  The result is likely to have significant consequences and implications for both the AI landscape and copyright of creative content.

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In Focus

3 predictions in AI for 2024 (from a16z’s Big Ideas in Tech)

I listened to a16z’s podcast over the holidays, including a 3-part series on Big Ideas in Tech 2024. It gives perspectives from renowned thought leaders on ideas the believe will drive innovation in tech over the coming year.

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Here’s my 3 favourite ideas mentioned in the AI and chatbots space:

• The focus from AI companies will move from models to UX. Products like ChatGPT, Bard and Midjourney have succeeded largely due to having the best models out there, but what happens when chatbots like Poe and Perplexity allows you to easily choose between models like GPT-4, Claude 2.1, Gemini, Mistral and more, right inside the same interface? Models are getting increasingly commoditised, and user experience will be a key for building a moat for AI companies going forward.
• Voice-first apps will become integral to our lives. Microsoft’s CEO called the past generations of voice assistants (like Siri and Alexa) “dumb as a rock”. Voice has been relatively limited as an interface for technology for other things than very straightforward tasks (“hey Siri, play Beast of Burden by the Rolling Stones")… until now. The biggest a-ha for me personally after starting to use the voice functionality in ChatGPT has been discovering how useful it can be on-the-go. After experiencing ChatGPT sans keyboard I can’t help but agree, voice-first AI apps will definitely be a thing this year.
• AI will supercharge the future of health. Healthcare’s high reliance on manual data input (think pagers and fax machines) makes it ready for AI adoption. The regulatory landscape for implementing AI in healthcare (with the FDA’s framework) is also likely to make things easier. On a related note, Bill Gates is also bullish on AI for healthcare; from his recently published 2024 predictions: “artificial intelligence is about to accelerate the rate of new discoveries at a pace we’ve never seen before”.

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GPTs

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Top 3 trending

Humanize AI text - Converts AI-generated text into a more human-like format, offering a free tool for enhancing AI content.

Viral Intro Hooks - Generates catchy intro hooks for your next video.

SEO Assist - Helps optimize your website for search engines.

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Categories with most new launches

🍿 Entertainment - 123 GPTs (47 new)

↳ Sheet Maker, ChatPOD, SAGA...

📣 Marketing and SEO - 138 GPTs (46 new)

↳ SEO Assist, On Page SEO, Hormozi GPT...

🖼️ Image Generation -  158 GPTs (41 new)

↳ Midjourney Helper, AI Drawing Generator, SuperDalle...

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Bytes

• ChatGPT now lets you archive your chats.
• OpenAI is rumoured to be in early discussions for a new round of funding which could make the company the second-most valuable startup in the US, after Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
• ChatGPT’s Chinese competitor, Ernie bot from Baidu, reportedly now has over 100m users.
• Microsoft Copilot is available as a chatbot app for your phone
• It’s available on iOS and Android.
• Mistral aims to ship an open-source model that’s on the level of GPT-4 in 2024.
• As of January 1st, Anthropic will defend customers building with their Claude API from any copyright claims. Also, the company projects over $850 million in annualised revenue rate this year.
• Midjourney version 6 is now live. Just type --v 6 after your prompt to test it out!
• Creators on YouTube will soon be required to disclose use of AI, which will put a content label on their videos indicating the content is synthetic. Google will also require advertisers in the upcoming election to disclose any usage of AI.
• Two thirds of the $27 billion raised for AI startups last year was from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

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That’s a wrap for this week!

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Until next time,

Dario Chincha 🧙🏼‍♂️