by To say that 2023 was the year of AI would be an understatement.
From Nvidia (NVDA) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) to Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI, Silicon Valley just couldn’t get enough of AI generation. Listen in on any corporate earnings call, and you’ll hear CEOs like Amazon’s (AMZN) Andy Jassy, Meta’s (META) Mark Zuckerberg, Intel’s (INTC) Pat Gelsinger, and AMD’s (AMD) Lisa Su toout AI capabilities of their companies.
Heck, even Wendy’s got in on the act, adding an AI-generated assistant to its drive-thru in May as part of a test program. The fast food chain is expanding to more locations in 2024.
AI may have been the most important story in 2023, but it really started to gain steam in November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT. The chatbot quickly became the fastest growing app in history up to that point, reaching 100 million monthly users in just two months.
However, here are some of the highlights from the biggest story of 2023: The AI genetic explosion.
January:
Hot on the heels of ChatGPT’s success, Microsoft announced in January that it was investing $10 billion in OpenAI over several years. In February, with rumors that Microsoft was ready to launch its own AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT, Google debuted its Bard bot. The revelation, however, was light on details. Days later, Microsoft took the wraps off its Bing chatbot and new Edge browser. Both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stage, explaining the partnership, and how the two companies would bring generative AI to Microsoft’s customers.
March:
Google jumped in, opening access to Bard to a limited number of users. The move was largely seen as a way for Google to keep up with one of its biggest rivals in the tech space. Not to be outdone, in March, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta, that AI is the company’s biggest investment.
April:
Google announced that it was bringing its Brain AI team from Google Research and DeepMind together to create a new AI-first organization: Google DeepMind. That same month, Amazon announced its Bedrock platform that gives enterprise customers access to AI-generated foundation models—and its own Titan foundation models.
May:
Google continued to pour on the news. He opened his Bard chatbot to the public. It also launched its Search Generative Experience, an AI-powered generative version of Google Search during its I/O developer conference. Then Microsoft fired back by revealing that it was bringing its AI-powered Windows Copilot to Windows 11. Oh, and Nvidia’s market capitalization briefly topped $1 trillion for the first time, cementing its status as the AI chip leader.
July:
As AI continued to generate headlines, the Biden Administration announced that it had received agreements from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI to adhere to voluntary rules related to the safety and development of AI. Also in July, Microsoft announced that it would charge customers $30 per month, per user for its Microsoft 365 Copilot, which adds AI generation capabilities to the company’s productivity suite. The next month, in August, Google responded, saying it will also charge $30 per month, per user for its own AI generation offering, Duet AI for Workspace.
September:
Amazon, eager to get deeper into generative AI, announced that it was investing $4 billion in OpenAI competitor Anthropic. Meta also revealed that it was rolling out AI stickers on its apps, a new AI assistant for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. It also implemented AI personalities – celebrities like Tom Brady and Kendall Jenner. Also in September: with fears rising that AI would be used in negative ways — and no movement from Congress — the Biden Administration signed an executive order seeking to address potential cybersecurity, discrimination, and growth issues related to AI.
November:
OpenAI hosted its first developer event in November, unveiling a more powerful version of GPT-4 called GPT-4 Turbo – and an app store for ChatGPT called the GPT Store. (That’s where customers can buy customized versions of the company’s AI software.) Then all hell broke loose at OpenAI. The board fired CEO Sam Altman seemingly out of nowhere. Microsoft stepped in and offered him a job, hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to quit, and OpenAI eventually brought Altman back with some new board members, including a non-voting “observer” role for Microsoft. Meanwhile, Amazon announced its own Q chatbot to better compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google.
Christmas:
Finally, this month, Google unveiled its GPT-4 Gemini competitor.
And here’s the thing, that’s not even all the AI news that made headlines this year. Expect even more in 2024.
In other words: buckle up.
Daniel Hawley He is the technology editor at Yahoo Finance. He has been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @Daniel Howley.
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