Best AI tools of 2024

Google Shopping Will Hallucinate AI Products And Then Find You Something Real To Buy

Here's an AI tool you probably hadn't considered. Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a slew of updates this December, including a feature that lets you dream up a product out of thin air with artificial intelligence, and then search the web for something similar that exists in the real world.

"We're introducing a new way to put the item that's on your mind right into your shopping cart with AI-powered image generation for shopping," said Julie Black, Google's Director of Product for Consumer Shopping, in a blog post. "Soon when you use SGE to look for apparel, you'll have the option to generate photorealistic images inspired by the words you search — and shop products that match those images."

For example, let's say you're shopping for a winter coat. You type that in, and Google will generate an image, that you can then alter with additional prompts, say "more colorful," or "give it shiny metallic fabric." Once you're done, Google's image recognition will search through the 35 billion products plugged into Google's Shopping tool and find the closest thing on the web.

This new update comes with a slew of other AI updates to Google's shopping tools, some of which are available right away. For users who opt-in, Google will suggest other AI-generated gift ideas based on your search terms for inspiration. If you're shopping for an amateur chef, but don't know what to look for, you can type in "great gifts for home cooks." Google will then make AI-powered suggestions like specialty tools, artisanal ingredients, culinary subscriptions, or experiences like cooking classes.

There's also a new virtual home try-on feature. That tool has been available to women for a while, but as of today, Google's expanded it to men's tops. Enter that phrase, and the company will pull up results from participating brands—including Abercrombie, Banana Republic, J.Crew, and Under Armour—and offer you a "try on" button. Google then shows you AI-generated images of models wearing the clothes. You can pick from a selection of models who look like you based on factors like body type and skin color.

Google's SGE is only available if you opt in. Eligible users (there are a bunch of restrictions) can check it out here.

All three of these tools are an early glimpse of the promised revolution that AI is supposed to bring to looking things up on the internet. In the early days of ChatGPT, there was a widespread conversation about what a threat AI posed to Google's Search business. That talk has largely died down, but there was a real idea lurking in the background.

Google Search (and its largely insignificant competitors) have organized the web in a very specific way, primarily based on identifying keywords on a page. You have to put your query into words that Google can understand to find what you're looking for. Essentially, we're shaping our thoughts for a computer. The long-term vision of AI is that the computers will finally be able to speak our language so you can ask questions the same way you'd talk to another person. If anyone can realize that dream, it will turn the internet upside down, and take the world along with it.

These new shopping tools from Google seem fun; perhaps they'll be useful, or they might just be gimmicks. Either way, they may be an important preview of the future.

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Google's AI Vision: Building Smarter Solutions With Advanced Multimodal Models From The Gemini Family

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Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet Outperforms OpenAI And Google In Enterprise AI Race

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Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence research company, has announced the release of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, a groundbreaking AI model that combines unparalleled performance with cost-effectiveness. This latest iteration of the Claude model family is set to revolutionize the enterprise AI landscape, offering businesses cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

Daniela Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, spoke with VentureBeat about the significance of this release. "Claude 3.5 Sonnet is now the most capable, smartest, and cheapest model available on the market today," Amodei said. "Out of the standard seven intelligence and capability metrics, Claude 3.5 Sonnet beats all of the competition on six of them and is quite close on the seventh. For standard vision metrics, we're the top in the leaderboard on four out of five, and a close second on one."

The release timeline and capabilities of Anthropic's Claude AI models compared to OpenAI's GPT and Google's Gemini models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet, released today, surpasses the performance of GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, and older models across various benchmarks, representing a significant milestone in Anthropic's rapid innovation and enterprise-focused strategy. (Image Credit: Anthropic) Revolutionizing enterprise AI: Claude 3.5 Sonnet's unmatched performance and affordability

The introduction of Claude 3.5 Sonnet comes just three and a half months after the release of Claude 3.0 in March, highlighting Anthropic's commitment to rapid innovation. "We've just surpassed our flagship model, Opus, with Sonnet 3.5, and we're pricing it at close to a fifth of the price," Amodei revealed. "The reason we're doing that is we heard enterprise feedback that they care about quality, safety, reliability, speed, and cost. We're really aiming to prioritize those things."

Anthropic's focus on the enterprise market sets it apart from competitors like OpenAI, which has primarily targeted consumers with its GPT models. While OpenAI has made significant strides in pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities, Anthropic has carved out a niche by tailoring its offerings to the specific needs of businesses. This strategic difference is evident in the features and pricing of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which prioritizes the key factors that matter most to enterprise customers.

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A comparison of Claude 3.5 Sonnet's performance against other leading AI models across various benchmarks. It outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4o and Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro in key areas such as graduate-level reasoning, code generation, multilingual math, and grade school math. The model's strong performance highlights Anthropic's commitment to delivering cutting-edge AI capabilities to enterprise customers. (Image Credit: Anthropic) Artifacts: Enabling seamless collaboration for business teams

One of the standout features of Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the introduction of Artifacts, a collaboration tool designed for teams working within businesses. "Artifacts allows teams to pull in a lot of information, like documents or case files for a legal firm, or visual assets and tone guidelines for a marketing agency," Amodei said. "A team of marketers can now sit together and co-develop a project with Claude within the team space using Artifacts."

While Claude 3.5 Sonnet excels in text and image inputs, Anthropic made a strategic decision not to prioritize speech input or output based on customer feedback. "That sort of hasn't been a top request from our enterprise customers," Amodei said. "We can imagine that over time, for things like customer support, there could be value in people being able to do phone calls in or out. That's something we're considering for our long-term product roadmap."

Anthropic's new Artifacts feature in Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The AI model responds to a user's request to create 8-bit style seashells to complement a crab illustration, showcasing its ability to collaborate with users on creative projects within a shared workspace. Artifacts aims to enhance team productivity and innovation by enabling seamless interaction between humans and AI. (Video Credit: Anthropic) Anthropic's customer-centric approach drives rapid innovation

Anthropic's focus on delivering value to enterprise businesses has been a driving force behind their rapid development cycle. "Part of what we believe has contributed to our ability to very quickly ship new products and features has been really just reacting and listening directly to what our customers are asking for," Amodei told VentureBeat.

As the AI arms race continues to heat up, with competitors like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Meta's LLaMA making headlines, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet is poised to make a significant impact on the enterprise AI market. With its unmatched capabilities and cost-effectiveness, businesses across various industries are likely to take notice and explore how this powerful tool can enhance their operations and drive innovation.

The release of Claude 3.5 Sonnet marks another milestone in Anthropic's mission to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence while prioritizing the needs of enterprise customers. As the company continues to engage with its diverse customer base and gather valuable feedback, the future looks bright for Anthropic and the businesses that stand to benefit from their groundbreaking technology.

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