Key Players in Generative AI landscape

Introduction

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that has the ability to create new content based on data from existing content like images, text, audio, or video.

Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI are some of the key players in the generative AI landscape. They provide diverse approaches and solutions for applications and use cases like content creation, data augmentation, privacy, personalization, and entertainment.

Google

Google has been using generative AI to create new experiences for its users.

Bard by Google is an AI chatbot that can generate responses to text prompts. Just like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Bard is also a large conversational language model. The difference, however, is that it can access the internet to leverage Google search and respond accordingly.

Google's Generative AI App Builder tool helps developers build and deploy chatbots and search applications in minutes.

Duet AI for Google Workspace makes work more effective, and Duet AI for Google Cloud is an always-on AI collaborator that provides generative AI-powered assistance to cloud users of all types.

IBM

IBM is a leading enterprise in developing and applying generative AI models across diverse domains like foundation models, enterprise applications, and mainframe applications.

IBM has created a generative AI-assisted product called watsonx to accelerate the modernization of mainframe applications.

IBM Watson Code Assistant is a tool that uses IBM Watson AI-generated recommendations to make code writing easier. The IBM watsonx foundation models power it. It is designed to bring IT automation to business as an accessible asset for all, not just subject matter experts.

IBM’s Watson Code Assistant portfolio will expand over time to include multiple programming languages to address the challenges developers face in their modernization efforts.

Microsoft

Microsoft has launched several products and services enabling developers, researchers, and organizations to use generative AI for various purposes.

It has partnered with OpenAI to optimize the use of the Azure infrastructure. Azure is a cloud computing platform by Microsoft that provides several services and tools for building, deploying, and managing applications through global data centers.

Image Creator, a generative AI tool by Microsoft Bing, generates images based on text. It can create images from words with the help of AI.

Microsoft's AI Skills Initiative aims to provide training and resources that empower the workforce to use generative AI. The Generative AI Skills Grant Challenge by Microsoft is a program that supports nonprofits, social enterprises, and research or academic institutions to explore, develop, and implement generative AI solutions.

OpenAI

OpenAI is a nonprofit organization focused on AI research and development. Generative AI models by OpenAI can produce language, code, and images.

Generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) is a language generation model built by OpenAI to generate human-like text and is one of the most well-known examples of generative AI today. GPT is used to create short stories, social media content, and chatbots.

ChatGPT by OpenAI has grabbed the attention of consumers and enterprise leaders by demonstrating the potential of generative AI to transform the way we live and work. ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses the large language model (LLM) to interact with users conversationally. It can answer follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

OpenAI has created Jasper, an AI-powered platform to help automate tasks and reduce human labor costs. It helps companies incorporate OpenAI technology into their operations efficiently. It has also created Codex, a model that understands and executes simple natural language commands for the user, making it possible to build a natural language interface for existing applications.

Finally, DALL-E by OpenAI creates realistic images and art from natural language descriptions.

Other noteworthy contributors

Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) has also made significant strides in AI algorithms. The company uses neuro-symbolic AI, combining neural networks and symbolic reasoning. It can be applied to real-life problems in healthcare, finance, and beyond. Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMA) is a family of large language models engineered to power various applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Bing Chat.

Leveraging the contribution of world-class AI experts, other smaller research-centric organizations have also been taking forward the progress of generative AI.

Ian Goodfellow, a former Google Brain research scientist and director of machine learning at Apple, created the first implementation of a generative model based on adversarial networks called generative adversarial networks (GANs).

Diederik Kingma, a scientist at Google, and Max Welling, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, introduced variational autoencoders (VAEs), a generative AI algorithm that generates new content, identifies anomalies, and removes noise using deep learning.

GANs and VAEs can be applied to several use cases, like implementing chatbots for customer service and technical support.

Adobe has created Firefly, a generative AI-powered content creation tool that allows users to experiment, imagine, and create an infinite range of images using simple text prompts in over a hundred languages.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed PolyCoder, an open-source programming language. It is an automated code generator that can write in different programming languages based on a prompt, helping to reduce development costs and enabling greater focus on creative tasks.

The start-up company Stability AI has built Stable Diffusion, a deep learning text-to-image model based on diffusion techniques. It is used to generate detailed images based on text descriptions.

A San Francisco-based independent research lab, Midjourney Inc., has created Midjourney, one of the most well-known AI software programs that can create beautiful AI-generated artwork by entering a text-based prompt that describes the image.

Hugging Face is an open-source data science and machine learning platform that provides the infrastructure to host, train, and deploy AI models. It was founded by French entrepreneurs Clement Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf.

Craiyon is a free AI image generator tool that uses AI to produce images based on text input. You can type in the keywords, letting Craiyon do the rest.

With such a powerhouse of players, big and small, it is safe to say that generative AI is set for explosive growth, bringing unprecedented speed, creativity, and effectiveness to education, work, and society.

Summary

In this reading, you learned that Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI are the key players in generative AI. You saw the significant contributions of each of these players.

Google’s contributions, amongst many, are Bard, the Generative AI App Builder, and Duet AI.

IBM has created watsonx, the IBM Watson Code Assistant tool, and more.

Microsoft has created Image Creator by Bing and runs an AI Skills Initiative program and a grant program that supports research.

OpenAI has built ChatGPT, GPT, Jasper, Codex, and DALL-E.

You also learned about the contributions of relatively smaller but significant enterprises such as GANs and VAEs, Firefly by Adobe, PolyCoder, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Hugging Face, and Craiyon.