3.7.2023

Trends in AI: June

Notable advancements were announced in June 2023, including Voicebox Meta's latest breakthrough in the field of speech generation, the groundbreaking McKinsey report on the profound impact of AI on the economy, and other significant developments in generative AI. This article showcases some of the most remarkable achievements in AI recently unveiled.

Cedric May

Chief Technology Officer

Trends

From the Lab to the Bank: How Generative AI is Reshaping the Economy and Ushering in a Job Boom

Generative AI Market set to Explode: A $1.3 Trillion Projection by 2032

Consumer-focused AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google's Bard are driving the growth of generative AI, which is projected to hit $1.3 trillion by 2032, growing at an impressive rate of 42% over a decade. This is due to the rising need for infrastructure to train AI systems and the devices that utilize them, as well as advertising and other services. According to the Bloomberg Intelligence report, revenue growth of $247 billion is expected for training AI models, $192 billion for AI-assisted digital ads, and $134 billion for AI servers. Companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Microsoft are poised to benefit from this boom. Ever since ChatGPT's launch, generative AI has gone global and disrupted industries like customer service and banking. Investors have taken note, with Nvidia's shares climbing 28% since May 24 and briefly reaching a $1 trillion valuation this week.

Predictions of Generative AI market until 2032
©️Bloomberg

McKinsey's Insight: The Impending Economic Transformation by Generative AI

McKinsey, a global consulting firm, has recently released a report titled "The Economic Potential of Generative AI." This report explores the potential of generative AI and its impact on the economy. The report highlights several key insights that are worth noting.Generative AI has the potential to greatly impact the global economy. By embedding it into software, the estimate could double, increasing the impact of all AI by 15-40%.

  1. Generative AI use cases deliver 75% of their value across customer operations, marketing, sales, software engineering, and R&D.
  2. All industry sectors will be impacted by Generative AI, with Banking, High Tech, and Life Sciences seeing the biggest impact. The banking industry alone could deliver up to $340 billion in value annually if use cases were fully implemented. Retail and consumer packaged goods could see an impact of $400 billion to $660 billion per year.
  3. Generative AI can automate up to 60-70% of employees' time through automating individual activities. It has the potential to accelerate the pace of workforce transformation.
  4. Half of today's work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045.
  5. Generative AI can increase labor productivity growth by 0.1 to 0.6 percent annually by 2040, depending on the rate of technology adoption and worker retraining.
  6. Generative AI is still in its early stages and has considerable challenges to address, such as managing risks, rethinking core business processes, and determining new skills and capabilities for the workforce.
Chart on how Generative AI could have the biggest impact on collaboration and the application of expertise, activities that previously had a lower potential for automation
©️ McKinsey

Job Boom in Generative AI Despite Tech Sector Downturn

Generative AI job postings in the US have surged by an impressive 20% just last month, as companies are eager to leverage the technology's potential for growth. According to job portal, Indeed, the number of job postings per million increased to 204 in May, which is more than double the figure from 2021. The high demand for AI-related jobs can mainly be attributed to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Data scientist positions accounted for 5% of all AI job postings, with software engineer, machine learning engineer, and data engineer roles also in high demand. In May alone, searches for generative AI jobs skyrocketed to 147 per million total jobs searched. Despite the overall tech job market in the US declining by 43.6%, with companies like Meta Platforms and Amazon Inc. laying off employees due to the current uncertain economic climate, the number of available AI jobs is not keeping up with the huge interest from job seekers.

Job searches for Generative AI jobs have jumped in the US since ChatGPT launch
©️Reuters

Reimagining Reality: Apple's Vision Pro, Adobe's AI Design Tool, and Meta's AI Speech Synthesis

Apple Vision Pro: A new Dimension of Digital Interaction

Apple has announced the release of the Apple Vision Pro, a new spatial computer that integrates digital content with the physical world. The Apple Vision Pro is a revolutionary device that introduces spatial computing and offers an infinite workspace for apps with a fully three-dimensional user interface. It features visionOS, the world's first spatial operating system, and EyeSight, an exceptional innovation that helps users stay in touch with people around them. Privacy and security are top priorities, with Optic ID, a secure authentication system that unlocks the device instantly.

A preview of Apple's Vision Pro in action
©️ Apple

The Apple Vision Pro also offers exciting new ways to experience entertainment, with two ultra-high-resolution displays and an advanced 3D audio system. Users can capture their favorite moments with the device's first-ever 3D camera, access their entire photo library on iCloud, and view their photos and videos in life-size, brilliant colors, and spectacular detail.

Overall, the Apple Vision Pro is a compact, portable, and the most advanced personal electronic device ever created. It will be released in Spring next year, with pricing starting at $3,499.

Adobe's AI Revolution: Quick and Easy Design Tweaks with Generative Recolor

On Tuesday, Adobe announced that designers and marketers can now use Generative AI to quickly modify colors, themes, and fonts of graphics in Adobe Illustrator through text prompts. This revolutionary tool, named Generative Recolor, is the latest addition to Adobe’s cluster of generative AI tools and models under the umbrella of Firefly. Its main objective is to assist users in refreshing colors and fonts of a design quickly. Currently, Generative Recolor is available in beta in Adobe Illustrator, one of the top software used in creating logos, posters, product packaging, websites, and apparel designs. With descriptive prompts like “peaceful pastels,” “neon pop,” and “fall foliage,” designers can effortlessly create variations of color palettes for seasonal marketing and advertising. Adobe remains committed to developing models for video and 3D generation and plans to continue adding data from Adobe Stock to expand its inventory and data catalog.

Speak the Future: Meta AI's Voicebox Reshapes Speech Generation

Meta AI researchers achieved a new breakthrough in generative AI for speech with Voicebox. The model can produce high-quality audio clips in six languages and perform noise removal, content editing, style conversion, and diverse sample generation. It outperforms the current state of the art English model VALL-E on zero-shot text-to-speech and cross-lingual style transfer tasks, while being 20 times faster. Voicebox is built upon the Flow Matching model and trained with over 50,000 hours of recorded speech and transcripts from public domain audiobooks. It excels in in-context text-to-speech synthesis, speech denoising and editing, and diverse speech sampling. Although the model or code is not available publicly, the paper provides a detailed account of the approach and results.

Policy and Progress: OpenAI's EU Lobbying Success, AI in White House, and Lenovo's Billion-Dollar Bet

Lobbying for AI: OpenAI's Influence on the EU AI Act

OpenAI has been lobbying the EU to weaken incoming AI legislation. OpenAI lobbied to exclude all general-purpose AI systems from being designated as "high risk" in the EU AI Act, which regulates the use of artificial intelligence. Their lobbying efforts were successful, and general-purpose AI systems were not automatically classified as high risk in the final draft of the EU AI Act approved on June 14th. However, the final version of the EU AI Act imposes greater transparency requirements on "foundation models" such as ChatGPT, which requires companies to carry out risk assessments and disclose if copyrighted material has been used to train their AI models.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has warned that the company may cease its operations in the EU market if they are unable to comply with the region's incoming AI regulations. The legislation will now be discussed among the European Council in a final "trilogue" stage, which aims to finalize details within the law, including how and where it can be applied. Final approval is expected by the end of this year and may take around two years to come into effect.

AI Takes Center Stage in White House Discussions

In April, President Joe Biden met with his top advisers to discuss the impact of AI on cybersecurity and jobs. The president recognized the significance of AI in policymaking, which has become a central priority. AI is being tackled on multiple fronts, including misinformation, cybersecurity, economic transformation, and equity. Leading AI companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are expected to announce privacy and safety commitments crafted in coordination with the White House by next month. The White House is also developing policies to respond to the cybersecurity risks associated with AI and coordinating with the G7 to establish international norms around AI. This year, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to root out bias in artificial technologies used by the federal government and combat algorithmic discrimination. Additionally, $140 million has been allocated to launch new AI research institutes.

Lenovo Commits $1B to Supercharge AI and Cognitive Solutions

Lenovo is making a bold and confident move by investing $1 billion over three years to expand infrastructure solutions that will enable businesses worldwide to make generative AI and cognitive decisions. This investment not only accelerates innovation but also extends Lenovo's AI-ready portfolio, which already offers over 70 products to choose from. The company is also partnering with industry leaders such as DeepBrain AI to offer an end-to-end solution for generative AI virtual assistants that can be paired with powerful large language models (LLMs) to deliver 24/7 automated concierge service in hospitality and retail settings. Additionally, Lenovo is allocating $100 million to the expansion of the Lenovo AI Innovators program, which has already delivered over 150 AI-ready solutions with 45 leading ISV partners, showcasing Lenovo's commitment to delivering cutting-edge AI technologies to its customers. Finally, Lenovo has established a new AI discovery centre for excellence, which will help customers discover areas to apply AI and make informed decisions.

From the Lab to the Bank: How Generative AI is Reshaping the Economy and Ushering in a Job Boom

Generative AI Market set to Explode: A $1.3 Trillion Projection by 2032

Consumer-focused AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google's Bard are driving the growth of generative AI, which is projected to hit $1.3 trillion by 2032, growing at an impressive rate of 42% over a decade. This is due to the rising need for infrastructure to train AI systems and the devices that utilize them, as well as advertising and other services. According to the Bloomberg Intelligence report, revenue growth of $247 billion is expected for training AI models, $192 billion for AI-assisted digital ads, and $134 billion for AI servers. Companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Microsoft are poised to benefit from this boom. Ever since ChatGPT's launch, generative AI has gone global and disrupted industries like customer service and banking. Investors have taken note, with Nvidia's shares climbing 28% since May 24 and briefly reaching a $1 trillion valuation this week.

Predictions of Generative AI market until 2032
©️Bloomberg

McKinsey's Insight: The Impending Economic Transformation by Generative AI

McKinsey, a global consulting firm, has recently released a report titled "The Economic Potential of Generative AI." This report explores the potential of generative AI and its impact on the economy. The report highlights several key insights that are worth noting.Generative AI has the potential to greatly impact the global economy. By embedding it into software, the estimate could double, increasing the impact of all AI by 15-40%.

  1. Generative AI use cases deliver 75% of their value across customer operations, marketing, sales, software engineering, and R&D.
  2. All industry sectors will be impacted by Generative AI, with Banking, High Tech, and Life Sciences seeing the biggest impact. The banking industry alone could deliver up to $340 billion in value annually if use cases were fully implemented. Retail and consumer packaged goods could see an impact of $400 billion to $660 billion per year.
  3. Generative AI can automate up to 60-70% of employees' time through automating individual activities. It has the potential to accelerate the pace of workforce transformation.
  4. Half of today's work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045.
  5. Generative AI can increase labor productivity growth by 0.1 to 0.6 percent annually by 2040, depending on the rate of technology adoption and worker retraining.
  6. Generative AI is still in its early stages and has considerable challenges to address, such as managing risks, rethinking core business processes, and determining new skills and capabilities for the workforce.
Chart on how Generative AI could have the biggest impact on collaboration and the application of expertise, activities that previously had a lower potential for automation
©️ McKinsey

Job Boom in Generative AI Despite Tech Sector Downturn

Generative AI job postings in the US have surged by an impressive 20% just last month, as companies are eager to leverage the technology's potential for growth. According to job portal, Indeed, the number of job postings per million increased to 204 in May, which is more than double the figure from 2021. The high demand for AI-related jobs can mainly be attributed to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Data scientist positions accounted for 5% of all AI job postings, with software engineer, machine learning engineer, and data engineer roles also in high demand. In May alone, searches for generative AI jobs skyrocketed to 147 per million total jobs searched. Despite the overall tech job market in the US declining by 43.6%, with companies like Meta Platforms and Amazon Inc. laying off employees due to the current uncertain economic climate, the number of available AI jobs is not keeping up with the huge interest from job seekers.

Job searches for Generative AI jobs have jumped in the US since ChatGPT launch
©️Reuters

Reimagining Reality: Apple's Vision Pro, Adobe's AI Design Tool, and Meta's AI Speech Synthesis

Apple Vision Pro: A new Dimension of Digital Interaction

Apple has announced the release of the Apple Vision Pro, a new spatial computer that integrates digital content with the physical world. The Apple Vision Pro is a revolutionary device that introduces spatial computing and offers an infinite workspace for apps with a fully three-dimensional user interface. It features visionOS, the world's first spatial operating system, and EyeSight, an exceptional innovation that helps users stay in touch with people around them. Privacy and security are top priorities, with Optic ID, a secure authentication system that unlocks the device instantly.

A preview of Apple's Vision Pro in action
©️ Apple

The Apple Vision Pro also offers exciting new ways to experience entertainment, with two ultra-high-resolution displays and an advanced 3D audio system. Users can capture their favorite moments with the device's first-ever 3D camera, access their entire photo library on iCloud, and view their photos and videos in life-size, brilliant colors, and spectacular detail.

Overall, the Apple Vision Pro is a compact, portable, and the most advanced personal electronic device ever created. It will be released in Spring next year, with pricing starting at $3,499.

Adobe's AI Revolution: Quick and Easy Design Tweaks with Generative Recolor

On Tuesday, Adobe announced that designers and marketers can now use Generative AI to quickly modify colors, themes, and fonts of graphics in Adobe Illustrator through text prompts. This revolutionary tool, named Generative Recolor, is the latest addition to Adobe’s cluster of generative AI tools and models under the umbrella of Firefly. Its main objective is to assist users in refreshing colors and fonts of a design quickly. Currently, Generative Recolor is available in beta in Adobe Illustrator, one of the top software used in creating logos, posters, product packaging, websites, and apparel designs. With descriptive prompts like “peaceful pastels,” “neon pop,” and “fall foliage,” designers can effortlessly create variations of color palettes for seasonal marketing and advertising. Adobe remains committed to developing models for video and 3D generation and plans to continue adding data from Adobe Stock to expand its inventory and data catalog.

Speak the Future: Meta AI's Voicebox Reshapes Speech Generation

Meta AI researchers achieved a new breakthrough in generative AI for speech with Voicebox. The model can produce high-quality audio clips in six languages and perform noise removal, content editing, style conversion, and diverse sample generation. It outperforms the current state of the art English model VALL-E on zero-shot text-to-speech and cross-lingual style transfer tasks, while being 20 times faster. Voicebox is built upon the Flow Matching model and trained with over 50,000 hours of recorded speech and transcripts from public domain audiobooks. It excels in in-context text-to-speech synthesis, speech denoising and editing, and diverse speech sampling. Although the model or code is not available publicly, the paper provides a detailed account of the approach and results.

Policy and Progress: OpenAI's EU Lobbying Success, AI in White House, and Lenovo's Billion-Dollar Bet

Lobbying for AI: OpenAI's Influence on the EU AI Act

OpenAI has been lobbying the EU to weaken incoming AI legislation. OpenAI lobbied to exclude all general-purpose AI systems from being designated as "high risk" in the EU AI Act, which regulates the use of artificial intelligence. Their lobbying efforts were successful, and general-purpose AI systems were not automatically classified as high risk in the final draft of the EU AI Act approved on June 14th. However, the final version of the EU AI Act imposes greater transparency requirements on "foundation models" such as ChatGPT, which requires companies to carry out risk assessments and disclose if copyrighted material has been used to train their AI models.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has warned that the company may cease its operations in the EU market if they are unable to comply with the region's incoming AI regulations. The legislation will now be discussed among the European Council in a final "trilogue" stage, which aims to finalize details within the law, including how and where it can be applied. Final approval is expected by the end of this year and may take around two years to come into effect.

AI Takes Center Stage in White House Discussions

In April, President Joe Biden met with his top advisers to discuss the impact of AI on cybersecurity and jobs. The president recognized the significance of AI in policymaking, which has become a central priority. AI is being tackled on multiple fronts, including misinformation, cybersecurity, economic transformation, and equity. Leading AI companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are expected to announce privacy and safety commitments crafted in coordination with the White House by next month. The White House is also developing policies to respond to the cybersecurity risks associated with AI and coordinating with the G7 to establish international norms around AI. This year, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to root out bias in artificial technologies used by the federal government and combat algorithmic discrimination. Additionally, $140 million has been allocated to launch new AI research institutes.

Lenovo Commits $1B to Supercharge AI and Cognitive Solutions

Lenovo is making a bold and confident move by investing $1 billion over three years to expand infrastructure solutions that will enable businesses worldwide to make generative AI and cognitive decisions. This investment not only accelerates innovation but also extends Lenovo's AI-ready portfolio, which already offers over 70 products to choose from. The company is also partnering with industry leaders such as DeepBrain AI to offer an end-to-end solution for generative AI virtual assistants that can be paired with powerful large language models (LLMs) to deliver 24/7 automated concierge service in hospitality and retail settings. Additionally, Lenovo is allocating $100 million to the expansion of the Lenovo AI Innovators program, which has already delivered over 150 AI-ready solutions with 45 leading ISV partners, showcasing Lenovo's commitment to delivering cutting-edge AI technologies to its customers. Finally, Lenovo has established a new AI discovery centre for excellence, which will help customers discover areas to apply AI and make informed decisions.

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