Welcome to the AI Ecosystem Report, featuring practitioner analyst and entrepreneur Toni Witt. This series is intended to deliver the timely intelligence about artificial intelligence (AI) you need to get up to speed for an upcoming client engagement or board meeting.
Highlights
Innovation (00:38)
The World Economic Forum (WEF) released an article highlighting cities around the world that are using GenAI in various ways. The WEF’s G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance is driving innovation, helping cities around the world bring new tech and GenAI to their infrastructure and their citizens.
- Buenos Aires is offering a GenAI-powered chatbot for public services.
- Singapore was the first city-state to build its own digital twin, modeling the city in various ways through digital information. It’s now able to apply this to optimizing public transport, helping teachers create classroom content, and more.
- Research groups in Amsterdam have been applying GenAI to create and identify new sustainable materials to use in city infrastructure.
- In Texas, cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston have been warming up to self-driving cars.
- The city government wants to make Boston more bike-friendly, so they’re using GenAI to visualize and showcase potential changes to the city’s landscape to add bike lanes, storage, and more.
Funding (03:04)
The web-based graphic design tool Canva acquired the AI startup, Leonardo AI. The CEO of Leonardo AI, JJ Fasson, confirmed that the full team will be joining Canva but operating independently. This is part of a larger strategy for Canva to build out its GenAI offering, its Magic Studio product suite.
Leonardo AI is a suite of GenAI tools for visual and creative use cases. It ranges from generating images to interior designs to architecture assets to video generation. The platform is being used by over 1,000 businesses and has around 19 million consumers worldwide. Its foundational image and video generation models will be vastly more powerful given the data that Canva has and the licensing it has secured.
Solution of the Week (04:45)
Google is bringing Gemini, its family of large language models, to physical devices after years of offering smart home products. For instance, the speakers and displays of Google Nest, the smart home thermostat, are getting revamped with Gemini. This is aiming to make products more useful for end customers and users. In this case, Gemini is replacing the Google Assistant that has been present in these products up until now.
Gemini is being added to these products to enhance conversational assistance. Gemini has better performance and more natural responses than Google Assistant. It uses AI to facilitate micro-adjustments based on your habits and external data.
The AI Ecosystem Q2 2024 Report compiles the innovations, funding, and products highlighted in AI Ecosystem Reports from the second quarter of 2024. Download now for perspectives on the companies, innovations, and solutions shaping the future of AI.
