How the emergence of AI is already moving the pillars of business

In 2024 It is difficult to imagine a world without the Internet, computers and smartphones.. But this was all normal not so long ago. Even in the early 90s in Europe, none of these three things were in the majority, although some families used these technologies.

This is when Google was born as a start-up created by two engineers who wanted to organize the Internet. Nothing more. This was back when Microsoft dominated computing through Windows and computers, courtesy of Apple, were mostly clones. But The company then led by Bill Gates did not know how to see what the Internet would really mean.and lost its total domination.

Google was growing and taking up more and more space, first with the search engine, then with an email service that exposed Hotmail and then with its own search engine, which in the age of Internet Explorer seemed like an offense, trying to fight against a giant like Microsoft. The story is already known.

During the same decade, mobile phones began to become popular and brands like Nokia or Siemens dominated the market. The Finnish company, in particular, had such a high market share that it would put any current phone company to shame. But, just like what happened to Microsoft before, He did not understand that the transition from cell phones to smartphones would change everything..

The AI ​​era

Last year began one of those paradigm shifts that lasts years but changes the industry forever. 2023 was the year of artificial intelligence, with the consolidation of ChatGPT, the launch of dozens of services and applications and the standardization of the use of these tools for work, studies

This new stage has not been initiated by Google, Apple, or even Microsoft. Another company, Open AI, has taken a step forward by marketing a series of services that no other company had marketed. The first was ChatGPT, but also its image generator, Dall-E.

The Giants’ response couldn’t have been more different. Leaving aside Apple, which advances at its own pace, as is the case with Nintendo in the video game sector, Microsoft and Google faced this new reality in completely different ways. The company now led by Satya Nadella made the maximum bet by investing $10 billion in OpenAI, which allowed it to be at the forefront of this wave of innovation.

For its part, Google found itself on the wrong foot, seeing how their development of large language models, which they had made available to developers, were now becoming tools in the hands of other companies that threatened their own position. With all, it took a long time to reactpartly because they didn’t know if this technology was mature enough to not wreak havoc if it became public and partly because he knew it would threaten his main source of income, advertising. Even today, he sees his gold mine in danger, because OpenAI is working on its own search engine.

Google is late

After months of doubts and lukewarm reactions, Sundar Pichai pressed the emergency button and gave way to integrating AI into the company’s products. This integration has started to be seen in some services, but nothing compared to what Microsoft has done,

Google then announced Gemini, its big new language model that promised to cover the technological leap that OpenAI seemed to be making. It even launched a Google One rate that integrates it, in response to ChatGPT Plus, the payment service from the company led by Sam Altman. There’s no denying that they’re trying to catch up, even with very rapid system updates.

However, unlike the ChatGPT proposal, Gemini Ultra is not available worldwide, only in certain countries, and in some languages. Yes, it is true that you can try the low power version as a replacement for Google Assistant, but even then it is not a complete replacement, you will have to give up some things if you want to use this new assistant voice.

The video is coming

This feeling of permanent leadership that OpenAI exercises over Google only increases with each presentation. A few weeks ago, Google presented VideoPoet, a video-focused system that allows it to be generated in natural language. This is progress compared to image generating applications, of which several already exist and which are of a high standard.

Google’s new proposal is not yet open to the public, but on its website there are dozens of examples of how it works, showing its five great capabilities, from creating video to editing it, to modifying parts of it, all at the same time. Text command help. It is an alternative to proposals like Runwayml, but much more powerful.

This, which could represent a slight advance compared to what existed on the market, was completely eclipsed by Open AI’s latest announcement, Sora, which demonstrated how video creation from text has evolved in less than a year. The results are spectacular and, although not yet perfect, they are already fully usable to replace, for example, archive videos.

This hit on the table reminded us of the launch of Dall-E 2, which was a huge step forward from previous versions, which were not entirely usable due to their quality. NOW The same thing happened with video and, once again, the one leading this jump was OpenAI. It seems that Sam Altman was able to accelerate everything he wanted without the limitations that the board of directors imposed on him until recently.

The CEO of the company himself used his profile on the social network ask your subscribers to send you text commands to create new videosso that the power of their product can be seen without the potential restrictions of the ideal conditions in which some might imagine the clips were created. The results are spectacularalthough it is not perfect as OpenAI itself states on its website.

Threat to employment

When the first versions of AI capable of generating text and images began to be widely used, Some voices have been raised to warn of the danger that this could represent for many jobs.. Publishers and illustrators realized that, in many cases, their knowledge and skills would no longer be in as much demand as before.

Now, this problem extends to photographers, videographers but also actors, makeup artists, fashion designers, lighting designers… The abilities demonstrated by Sora are so advanced that It’s not that this could be a threat in 5 or 10 years, it’s that it’s a threat right now.. Or at least this will be the case when Open AI opens this service to the public, which will obviously be paid but which, unless it has a prohibitive price, can be the nail in the coffin for many professions.

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