The Voicebot Podcast

The Voicebot Podcast

The Voicebot Podcast is about the intersection of voice and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It is a weekly look at trends, founders and newsmakers and supplements the daily research, analysis and news found at https://voicebot.ai.

Episodes

June 17, 2024 73 mins

OpenAI introduced GPT-4o as a new model and the foundation for ChatGPT. The company also offered more than a dozen videos and other use case examples, which enabled us to break down many of the nuances enabled by the new model. Is this the voice assistant everyone always wanted?

A day later, Google debuted its latest updates for Gemini and offered a preview of Project Astra, the upgraded future of Gemini assistant, which they say w...

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    Key stories in this episode include shadow AI arriving via employees, Meta's secret generative AI strategy, and a new framework for entertainment applications powered by the technology. There are also six stories about big funding rounds and several products adding generative AI-powered features.

    Generative AI News

    Top Story of the Week 🔦

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    Over two recent weeks a landslide of stories mostly revolved around large language models (LLM). Llama 3 was the biggest news, but the debut of new models by Microsoft, Mistral, and X.ai also pointed to a downstream impact. We also have a couple of nine-figure funding rounds, a nine-figure acquisition, and a new unicorn valuation is confirmed.

    Read the news through the links below and watch my discussion with Eric Schwartz of Voice...

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    For you today, we have updates around Google Cloud Next, the LLM announcement gauntlet continues, new funding rounds, and text-to-music apps. This week's news concludes with a discussion around the shortcomings of autoregressive large language models (LLM) and why the technology is unlikely to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

    Read the news through the links below and watch my discussion with Eric Schwartz of Voicebot....

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    We begin this week with three thematic discussions. Generative AI myths reviews the recent Stargate rumors and why journalists are so easily co-opted into publishing stories that may have a seed of truth shrouded in impractical, nonsensical claims. We also discuss three news items highlighting how generative AI is transforming the search market and the coalition of companies that want to displace NVIDIA from its generative AI thron...

  • We begin with an in-depth discussion of Microsoft's not-quite acquisition of Inflection AI and the billion-dollar startup's recent large language model (LLM), which appears to approach GPT-4-level performance. We carry on with the LLM roundup with a review of Grok-1's open-source debut, Apple's discussions with Google about using Gemini for the iPhone, GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 rumors, Perplexity's rumored unicorn status, Together AI's fun...

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    Google dominated the generative AI news earlier in 2024. The unexpected introduction of Gemini 1.5 is covered in depth, and guest host Allen Firstenberg discusses his first-hand experience testing the model. We also cover the Gemma open-source models and Google's latest PR misstep related to its image generation. Also on tap are discussions around Mistral, NVIDIA, Adobe, Pindrop, and a few more.

    Gener...

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    Vijay Balasubramaniyan is the CEO and co-founder of Pindrop. He first joined me on the podcast way back in 2019 for episode 86. I still recommend people listen to that episode. You will learn a lot about voice authentication. In 2021, Vijay returned for episode 193. We now have him three years later and the topic is new.
     
    Deepfakes and voice clones are comm...
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    Joanna Czajka joined me to discuss how her team integrated OpenAI technology into the Opera browser to provide more value to users. She goes into the journey that started with rethinking the browsing experience and being midstream in that process when ChatGPT launched. That led to more rethinking of the experience and the introduction of several generative AI features.
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    We have 16 generative AI news stories from the first two weeks in February. The evolution of assistants topped the news with ChatGPT, Gemini (aka Google Bard), and Hugging Chat. We break that down in depth and how memory and how generative AI personal assistants are attempting to fill in the gaps where their predecessors fell short. There is more funding news, and a number of new products from Slack, AirBnB, and Otter. We talk abou...

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    Here are fifteen generative AI news stories from the past week. Links to the articles are below, or you can watch the GAIN Rundown via YouTube above.

    Deepfakes and momentum by Microsoft topped the news this week, while positive moves by Google may have gone unnoticed. Plus, we have another deep dive into new retail-oriented solutions, new funding rounds, and more.

    Generative AI News

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    We have sixteen generative AI news stories again for you this week on the Generative AI News Rundown (GAIN). Watch the video discussion above or click the links below to read the news.

    ChatGPT went to college this week as Arizona State University announced a partnership with OpenAI, while Washington State adopts new generative AI guidelines encouraging public school systems to "embrace AI." Those two stories reflect a very differen...

  • Sixteen generative AI news stories from the past weeks were on the agenda for this week's edition of GAIN. You can watch the video discussion above or click the links below to read the news.

    Meta, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, ByteDance, Anthropic, Amazon, Walmart, McKinsey, 1x, Will.i.am, and more all had news this week. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined me to discuss the stories behind the news in generative AI.

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    We highlighted 19 generative AI news stories from early January in the latest episode of GAIN. Watch the video discussion above or read the news through the links below.

    CES is the featured segment at the top, with some hits and misses but mostly misses. We also have news from OpenAI with two ChatGPT announcements. That is followed by news from Google, Poe, and a number of funding rounds.

    Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, ...

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    Google once again made our featured story section with an independent benchmark performance analysis of the Gemini Pro LLM compared with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. We go into more depth about the benchmarks and how to interpret the results. Channel 1 says it's positioned to change the news media with its virtual human avatar-delivered stories and Accenture did a lot of generative AI revenue.

    Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joine...

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    Google ranks as our featured story section with the launch of the Gemini LLM and the new AI Studio. Mistral and Microsoft were other big newsmakers with the introduction of small LLMs this past week. And there is a lot on the new product and funding front, the EU AI Act, an OpenAI and news media tie-up, and a lot more.

    Generative AI News

    Featured Stori...

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    To say November closed with a flurry of generative AI news is a severe understatement. OpenAI almost melted down pulled it back together, and then we had a birthday for a little product called ChatGPT. Nearly every OpenAI competitor attempted to seize on the company's turmoil and ramped up their visibility for sales, product announcements, or fundraising. Amazon released a slate of new announcements at the AWS re-invent conference....

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    Today, we have a special episode that was recorded in the midst of the OpenAI management saga where CEO Sam Altman was fired and then hired back. While the management issues have been updated, I thought you might like a window into how developers were thinking about this incident and how the harm in reputation and relationships won't soon be resolved.
     
    Incl...
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    This week continues the theme of market shift. Satya Nadella correctly aligned with the generative AI zeitgeist in focusing on practical applications of the technology. Individuals and companies have moved past bewilderment and wonder and now want to begin implementing and adopting solutions that offer tangible value.

    Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined me this week to break down the news onslaught from Microsoft, mor...

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    GPTs enable users to create a custom ChatGPT experience for themselves and others. Developers gathered to discuss their early creations using OpenAI's latest innovation and wat they've learned.  

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