Hello readers,

Welcome to another edition of This Week in the Future! Google has rebranded Bard to Gemini and unveiled Gemini Advanced, a $20 a month subscription that gives you access to Gemini Ultra, their most capable model and a rival to OpenAI's GPT-4.

As always, thanks for being a subscriber! We hope you enjoy this week’s content — for a video breakdown, check out the episode on YouTube.

Let’s get into it!

Bard Becomes Gemini

In a strategic move, Google has bid farewell to the quirky moniker “Bard” and embraced the celestial allure of “Gemini”. This rebranding isn’t merely cosmetic; it signifies a pivotal moment in Google’s AI strategy. Let’s take a look at the recent Gemini announcements and explore the implications for the AI landscape.

Gemini Advanced

Gemini Advanced, part of the Google One AI Premium Plan, pairs with Ultra 1.0. This tier promises state-of-the-art performance and is designed for highly complex tasks. Gemini Ultra is meant to excel at coding and reasoning and outclass GPT-4. You'll also eventually get access to Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and other Google apps.

Mobile App

Google’s Gemini app for Android means users can now engage with Gemini natively on their mobile devices, though performance might be limited to Gemini Nano. iOS users will also have access to Gemini in the Google app.

Why This Matters

Google is mirroring OpenAI’s pricing scheme with a $20 a month subscription to access its most capable model. With two equally priced models vying for dominance, which will consumers choose? The marginally better performer or the one that is most easily accessible to them? If it’s the latter, then Google certainly has a slight advantage (even with ChatGPT’s massive user base). OpenAI won’t let things be decided on such mundane terms though. Model capability that brings with it a shock factor is what will ultimately win over customers and the press, so this rivalry will likely bring with it a few jaw-dropping innovations in the next few years.

Our Take

It’s great to see another highly capable model enter the arena, and ditching Bard for Gemini was a good decision, but there’s still something a little forced about Google’s entire approach to rolling out and marketing Gemini. They seem to want the glory before putting in all the work, telling us that Gemini constitutes a new era but not yet proving it. However, now that Gemini Ultra is available, users can put it to the test to see if it really does surpass GPT-4 (until GPT-5 comes out — the benefit of being ahead in AI).

🔥 Rapid Fire

• Hugging Face launches HuggingChat Assistants

• Google Maps adds new generative AI features

• Google releases MobileDiffusion, on-device text-to-image

• Amazon unveils Rufus for AI-assisted shopping

• Meta labels AI-generated images across platforms

• OpenAI adds C2PA metadata to DALL·E 3 images

• Microsoft collaborates with journalists on AI newsrooms

• Apple releases MGIE for AI image editing

• Apple publishes paper on new approach to speech recognition

• Cedars-Sinai launches AI health app for Apple Vision Pro

• Hong Kong firm loses $25 million in deepfake heist

• Website uses AI to generate fake IDs

• FCC bans AI voices in robocalls

🎙️ The AI For All Podcast

This week’s episode featured Lisa Thee, CEO of AMP Solutions, who discussed the ethics and responsible use of AI. We delve into the importance of trust and safety in today's interconnected world, and Lisa shares how her experience in combatting online abuse has informed her lessons for businesses to utilize AI effectively.

YouTube • Spotify • Apple • Google • Amazon

📖 What We’re Reading

3 Ways Organizations Can Integrate AI into Their Workflow (link)

AppSec is harder than you think. Here’s how AI can help. (link)

💻️ AI Tools and Platforms

• Matrices → The AI spreadsheet that fills itself

• Sune → The collaborative AI operating system

• Shortwave → The smartest email app on planet Earth

• Zerve → A unified developer space for data science and AI

• Landing AI → Build your own large vision models