Generative artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous in 2024 and has become a part of laptops, smartphones and everyday technology. With the advent of multimodal models, generative AI has broken new ground, processing text, video, images and audio – and even providing outputs that seamlessly combine these formats.
As 2024 approaches, TechRepublic revisits the year’s biggest generative AI stories.
1. NVIDIA AI architecture is sold out
NVIDIA was the clear winner in the AI space this year. Introduced in March, the Blackwell chip has become the gold standard of GPU microarchitecture for processing large amounts of information. Blackwell enables AI training, research, and computation for Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and xAI, among others. Since October, Blackwell chips have sold out over the following year as these processors have been popular with the company.
In March, sales of NVIDIA’s Hopper chips helped the company reach $2 trillion in market capitalization. NVIDIA has become one of the three most valuable companies in the world, alongside Microsoft and Apple. AMD and Intel also provide AI accelerator chips, although their businesses have not seen as explosive growth as NVIDIA.
Within the broader industry of generative artificial intelligence, the success of these powerful processors is just one of many ripple effects driven by growing demand for larger, higher-density data centers.
2. OpenAI revealed its secret o1
Many major AI companies have advanced this year with enterprise offerings, more powerful models, and experimented with new hardware. For OpenAI, there have been whispers of a “Strawberry” model that would take the next leap towards human intelligence. Strawberry turned out to be OpenAI o1, a “sensible” model that aimed to take more time to crunch more pressing problems than its predecessors in the GPT-4 family.
3. PC AI has become mainstream
Techies can think about the year 2024, when artificial intelligence has become a standard feature of almost every new computer. From Apple Intelligence to Microsoft Copilot, embedded AI was everywhere. In September 2024, Gartner predicted that AI PCs would account for 43% of all PC shipments by 2025.
However, a November article in Reuters found that demand for PCs remained low overall – although NVIDIA’s AI processors were on backorder, possibly due to limited availability of AI PCs.
4. Has AI brought a new way of thinking about AI?
Since the launch of the Apple Store in 2008, apps have been the primary way consumers interact with smart devices. Voice assistants like Siri have added another layer of convenience, allowing users to control certain apps using voice commands. The AI industry wants the next phase to be seamless control of every aspect of a computer or phone through AI, as demonstrated by Microsoft’s Copilot and Claude 3.5 Sonnet’s Computer Use features.
Using a computer with Claude allows the artificial intelligence to translate natural language instructions into commands that can be executed, such as moving the cursor, typing, and interacting with the computer like a human. However, this feature can be resource intensive. For example, performing a simple task like opening a URL and extracting information from a website can cost up to $0.31 in tokens.
5. Microsoft Recall has been repeatedly delayed
The Microsoft Recall caused controversy from the start due to the unrestricted access between Copilot and the rest of the PC, which raised security concerns. After a public preview was planned for June, early access for Recall was pushed back to October and then December. Recall was supposed to be a cornerstone of Microsoft’s AI PCs, but Microsoft’s delay in its pursuit of a “safe and trusted experience” shows that Recall has pushed the boundaries of what consumers are willing to share with AI.
6. ChatGPT adds “search” option.
In October, OpenAI extended ChatGPT with a Google-like search engine feature. Searching ChatGPT provides generative answers with links to external sites. Adding real-time information like weather reports could give OpenAI a competitive advantage over Google search. OpenAI has contracted with several media outlets to license their content to appear in ChatGPT search.
Initially, only ChatGPT Plus and Team users had access to ChatGPT search. However, in December, the tech giant made it available to all users.
7. Launched Apple Intelligence
Apple has been silent for much of the AI race, waiting until 2024 to reveal its plans. Apple Intelligence was announced in June for newer devices. Working with OpenAI, Apple has added many standard AI capabilities such as summarization and rewriting. It also brings limited image creation, mostly in cartoon styles, to prevent users from creating deepfakes.
Apple Intelligence uses the tech giant’s M-series chips or the A17 Pro chip or later. Starting with iOS 18.2, Apple devices can connect to ChatGPT and handle more complex questions asked of Apple Intelligence or Siri.
8. Google explored Gemini’s business use cases
Google Gemini wasn’t new for 2024. However, its launch in December 2023 and the launch of the smaller Gemma model in February means that most of Gemini’s public life took place this year. Google replaced its Bard brand with a more powerful model and brought Gemini to search, mobile apps, Chromebooks and its Vertex AI cloud platform. Following the AI ”agent” trend, Google released its own “gems” in August.
9. Regulation of artificial intelligence continues to evolve
In 2024, governments were working to regulate the use of AI. In Europe, the European Union’s artificial intelligence law came into force in August, outlining prohibited uses while seeking to provide guidelines to encourage innovation.
The UK has created an AI insurance market for business in the generative AI sector, with further legislation expected next year. The UK has joined several international initiatives with the US and others to standardize AI security.
In the US:
WATCH: Seven new AI research and development facilities to open across Europe from 2026 thanks to high-performance computing joint venture.
10. Video generation technology has matured
Generative AI video remains imperfect and often produces unpredictable results with inconsistent scenes and oddly proportioned or deformed limbs. But that hasn’t stopped companies from releasing AI video generators.
First introduced in February, OpenAI Sora was released to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users in December. Google Veo is available to select Google Cloud customers. Even Canva offers AI video generation.