AI Innovation Report 2023
Throughout 2023, we monitored and documented key innovations each month.
January 15:
ChatGPT becomes the fastest growing consumer app in history.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948386/chatgpt-active-user-count-openai-developer-conference
January 27:
Microsoft Invests $10 Billion in OpenAI.
February 06:
Google announces Bard
https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/
February: 09
Baidu Inc. Shares paper on ERNIE-Music Test-to-Waveform
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04456
February 24:
Meta Introduces LLaMA
https://ai.meta.com/blog/large-language-model-llama-meta-ai/
February 28:
Snapchat launches their AI chatbot ‘My AI’.
https://newsroom.snap.com/say-hi-to-my-ai
March 1:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT and Whisper API’s.
https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis
March 14:
Anthropic launches Cluade
https://www.anthropic.com/index/introducing-claude
March 17:
OpenAI launches GPT-4.
https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
March 22:
Google releases Bard.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/try-bard/
March 22:
Adobe launches AI image generator Adobe Firefly.
March 24:
OpenAI releases ChatGPT Plugins and hat tip to an AI App Store.
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins
March 24:
Canva launches new AI tools
https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/supercharging-the-visual-suite/.
March 24:
Runway Gen-1 Release
https://research.runwayml.com/gen1
March 30:
AutoGPT and open-source Autonomous agents make waves across social media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-GPT
March 15:
Midjourney v5 This version brought significant improvements in image quality, coherence, and accuracy in prompt following.
March 26:
BabyAGI was released. It is a pared-down version of the original Task-Driven Autonomous Agent, as shared on Twitter by Yohei Nakajima.
https://twitter.com/yoheinakajima/status/1640042616258707456
April 6:
Meta releases “Segment Anything Model” for AI to extract objects within images or videos.
https://ai.meta.com/blog/segment-anything-foundation-model-image-segmentation/
April 11:
Alibaba reveals their ChatGPT Rival “Tongyi Qianwen”.
https://www.alibabagroup.com/en-US/document-1582482069362049024
April 19:
ElevenLabs: Introducing Eleven Multilingual v1: Our New Speech Synthesis Model
https://elevenlabs.io/blog/eleven-multilingual-v1/
April 21:
Google Brain and Google DeepMind join forces.
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/announcing-google-deepmind/
April 12:
Databricks releases Dolly2
April 1:
LangChainAI v0.0.124 a MASSIVE update with many new features
https://twitter.com/LangChainAI/status/1640745193661165568
May 3:
Inflection AI releases Pi.
May 6:
Midjourney Release v5.1 for enhanced text-to-image generation, allowing users to create images from text prompts with greater detail and precision
https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/model-versions
May 10:
Meta introduces ImageBing, a new AI research model. –
https://ai.meta.com/blog/imagebind-six-modalities-binding-ai/
May 12:
Anthropic extends Claude’s token window to 100,000.
https://www.anthropic.com/index/100k-context-windows
May 19:
OpenAI launches a free ChatGPT iOS app.
https://openai.com/blog/introducing-the-chatgpt-app-for-ios
May 24:
Microsoft unveils Windows 11 AI Copilot, Bing plugins, Bing Browsing, and Windows Terminal.
May 25:
UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute Launches Open-Source “Falcon 40B” Large Language Model for Research & Commercial Utilization
June 2:
NVIDIA Research develops Neuralangelo for 3D reconstruction from 2D video clips.-
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/neuralangelo-ai-research-3d-reconstruction/
June 19:
Meta releases new text-to-speech AI called Audiobox.
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/introducing-voicebox-ai-for-speech-generation/
June 28:
Baidu introduces ERNIE 3.5.
https://multiplatform.ai/baidu-unveils-ernie-3-5-a-game-changing-ai-language-generation-model/
June 1:
NVIDIA Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction
July 4:
Midjourney launches new ‘Panning’ feature.
https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/pan
July 6:
Inflection AI develops a $880M AI supercomputer.
https://wccftech.com/inflection-ai-develops-supercomputer-equipped-with-22000-nvidia-h100-ai-gpus/
July 12:
Anthropic launches Claude 2.
https://www.anthropic.com/index/claude-2
July 19:
Meta and Microsoft release Llama 2.
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/07/llama-2/
July 20:
Apple enters the AI frenzy with ‘Apple GPT‘.
July 21:
ChatGPT update allows ‘custom instructions’.
https://openai.com/blog/custom-instructions-for-chatgpt
July 27:
Stability AI releases SDXL 1.0.
https://stability.ai/news/stable-diffusion-sdxl-1-announcement
July 11:
Pika Labs proudly announce our new feature: image-conditioned video generation.
https://twitter.com/pika_labs/status/1678892871670464513
August 11:
HeyGen Unveils Avatar Clones 2.0: A Big Leap Towards Hyper-Realistic AI-Generated Avatars.
https://sprinkleofai.com/heygen-unveils-avatar-clones-2-0/
August 23:
Meta open-sources an AI model called SeamlessM4T.
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/08/seamlessm4t-ai-translation-model/
August 20:
Midjourney Adds Image Inpainting
https://decrypt.co/153380/midjourney-inpainting-vary-region-tool-stable-diffusion-comparison
September 20:
Google announces Bard Extensions for Workspace.
https://blog.google/products/bard/google-bard-new-features-update-sept-2023/
September 21:
OpenAI announced DALL-E 3.
September 22:
Microsoft reveals Copilot, “Your everyday AI companion“.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/09/21/announcing-microsoft-copilot-your-everyday-ai-companion/
September 26:
ChatGPT goes multimodal with voice and images.
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-can-now-see-hear-and-speak
September 27:
Bloomberg reports CIA Builds Its Own Artificial Intelligence Tool .
September 29:
Mistral AI unveils open-sourced 7B language model.-
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/mistral-ai-makes-its-first-large-language-model-free-for-everyone/
October 4:
LinkedIn reveals new AI tools across products.
https://news.linkedin.com/2023/october/New_AI_Powered_Features_for_Businesses
October 23:
NVIDIA breakthrough enables robots to teach themselves.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/eureka-robotics-research/
October 20:
Canva AI innovation by introducing Magic Studio
October 20:
Shutterstock Integrates Creative AI into Library of 700M Images to Offer First-Ever Marketplace of Fully Customizable Stock
https://www.shutterstock.com/press/Shutterstock-Integrates-Creative-AI-znhKX
November 6:
Elon Musk’s xAI launches Grok.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1721027243571380324
November 7:
OpenAI reveals GPT Builder, GPT-4 Turbo, Assistants API and more at DevDay.
https://openai.com/blog/new-models-and-developer-products-announced-at-devday
November 9:
Amazon invests in training a massive language model codenamed ‘Olympus’.
November 14:
OpenAI confirms it’s working on GPT-5 and advanced AI agents.
https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-fired-apec-talk/
November 17:
YouTube and Google DeepMind reveal a new AI model called ‘Lyria’ for music creation.
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/transforming-the-future-of-music-creation/
November 17:
Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI.
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
November 21:
Stability AI releases Stable Video Diffusion
https://twitter.com/StabilityAI/status/1727042312172179645
November 22:
Sam Altman rehired as CEO of OpenAI.
https://openai.com/blog/sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-openai-has-a-new-initial-board
November 23:
Inflection AI releases Inflection-2.
https://inflection.ai/inflection-2
November 29:
Pika launches Pike 1.0, a text-to-video generator.
https://twitter.com/pika_labs/status/1729510078959497562
December 6:
Google DeepMind reveals Gemini.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-gemini-ai/
December 12:
French startup Mistral AI releases Mixtral.
https://mistral.ai/news/la-plateforme/
December 13:
Microsoft Research releases Phi-2. The surprising power of small language models.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/phi-2-the-surprising-power-of-small-language-models/
December 19:
Suno.ai releases make your AI song today. The same team behind open source project.
https://twitter.com/suno_ai_/status/1737299056290910464
December 20:
Microsoft partners with Suno AI for AI song generation.
https://twitter.com/suno_ai_/status/1737299056290910464
December 21:
Midjouney v6 release
https://mid-journey.ai/midjourney-v6-release/
December 22:
Apple research demonstrates AI techniques for iPhones.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/mobile-applications-accessible
December 28:
The New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement.
Recent Blog Posts
AI and Jobs: What Three Decades of Building Tech Taught Me About What’s Coming
In 2023, I started warning people. Friends. Family. Anyone who would listen. I told them AI would upend their careers within three years. Most nodded politely and moved on. Some laughed. A few got defensive. Almost nobody took it seriously. It's 2026 now. I was right. I wish I hadn't been. Who Am I to Say This? I've spent thirty years building what's next before most people knew it was coming. My earliest partner was Craig Newmark. We co-founded DigitalThreads in San Francisco in the mid-90s — Craig credits me with naming Craigslist and the initial setup. That project reshaped...
Feb 12, 2026The Species That Wasn’t Ready
Last Tuesday, Matt Shumer — an AI startup founder and investor — published a viral 4,000-word post on X comparing the current moment to February 2020. Back then, a few people were talking about a virus originating out of Wuhan, China. Most of us weren't listening. Three weeks later, the world rearranged itself. His argument: we're in the "this seems overblown" phase of something much bigger than Covid. The same morning, my wife told me she was sick of AI commercials. Too much hype. Reminded her of Crypto. Nothing good would come of it. Twenty dollars a month? For what?...
Feb 9, 2026Six ideas from the Musk-Dwarkesh podcast I can’t stop thinking about
I spent three days with this podcast. Listened on a walk, in the car, at my desk with a notepad. Three hours is a lot to ask of anyone, especially when half of it is Musk riffing on turbine blade casting and lunar mass drivers. But there are five or six ideas buried in here that I keep turning over. The conversation features Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison pressing Musk on orbital data centers, humanoid robots, China, AI alignment, and DOGE. It came days after SpaceX and xAI officially merged, a $1.25 trillion combination that sounds insane until you hear...