The 10 biggest new AI tools of 2024 — so far

OpenAI in May announced its new flagship model ChatGPT-4o — an AI chatbot that can see, hear, and have real-time conversations. The company said in its announcement that ChatGPT-4o is 50% cheaper and twice as fast as GPT-4 turbo.

The chatbot also got a big endorsement from Apple, which will put the product in its latest operating systems for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

But the product is facing delays with one of its most impressive features, “Voice Mode.” OpenAI says it needs more time to make improvements to the chatbot’s analytical skills. Voice Mode also came under scrutiny because actor Scarlett Johansson said it used her voice without her consent (which OpenAI denied) and threatened to file a lawsuit. OpenAI has since removed its “Sky” voice from Voice Mode — the one Johansson says is based on her voice.

Apple on June 10 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference unveiled its AI project, Apple Intelligence, which includes a number of new AI features that will be available in beta mode this fall on the next iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems.

Here are a few examples of the many new, free tools for Apple users: Safari’s new AI Highlight feature, like Google’s AI Overviews, summarizes web content and highlights relevant information on internet pages. Apple introduced a live translation app for Apple Watch that’s supported by machine learning. Its new “Math Notes” tool for its native Calculator and Notes apps use AI to solve math problems, instantly answering users’ handwritten questions on iPads.

Its iPad feature “Smart Script” uses AI to edit users’ handwritten notes. And Apple Intelligence can be used to edit pictures or make drawings on iPads look better. Users can utilize new AI-powered writing tools for Mac to edit emails to sound more professional, casual, or transform them into literal poems.

But its biggest revelation was its Siri update, which now uses AI to process personal information in users’ iPhones to respond to requests such as “show me photos of my mom and dad.” Siri can also take actions in your apps for you — upon your request — such as editing photos, copy and pasting those photos into Notes, and sending those notes in iMessage. 

Apple is also partnering with other AI software providers to bring their chatbots to its devices. So far, it’s announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to the iOS 18, and executives said it’s planning to make Google Gemini models available to iPhone users in the future.

At Google’s I/O developer conference in May, it debuted a prototype of Google’s new expert AI assistant that can see through a user’s phone and other objects like smart glasses. The assistant “build[s] on” Gemini, Google’s existing chatbot, the company says, and some of its capabilities are coming to the Gemini app and web experience later this year.

The development is part of Google DeepMind’s Project Astra, which aims to create “a universal AI agent” for users’ everyday lives. “It’s easy to envisage a future where you can have an expert assistant by your side, through your phone, or new exciting form factors like glasses,” DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told a crowd of a few thousand developers at the event.

Google also has new AI chatbot models — Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash — as well as an updated image-generator, Imagen 3. Those became generally available June 27.

In May at its annual developer conference, Microsoft announced its latest push into artificial intelligence with new Copilot Plus PCs. The brand denotes Microsoft laptops that come equipped with AI hardware and support for AI applications. Its all new AI computers make AI tasks available on-device, equipped with powerful Arm-based chips.

It has come with some snags though. One feature of the AI PC, “Recall,” takes periodic screenshots of users’ activity. The tool came under major scrutiny over privacy concerns, which Microsoft then addressed by saying the feature would be turned off by default.

Meta released its next generation open source large language model called Llama 3 in April. The model will support the use of conversational AI on its platforms, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

“[S]ince most of the other tools are based on models that are not open source, the level of public trust to Meta’s tools should be significantly higher,” biotech expert Alex Zhavoronkov wrote in an article for Forbes at the time.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the company’s next-generation AI chip “Blackwell” in March. It’s named after mathematician David Blackwell, the first Black scholar inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. The Blackwell chip is made up of 208 billion transistors, and can handle AI models and queries more quickly than its predecessors, Huang said. The Blackwell chips succeed Nvidia’s hugely in-demand H100 chip, which was named for the computer scientist Grace Hopper.

Mistral — a rapidly-growing European rival to OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI upstarts — unveiled a large language model for developers called Codestral in May that the company claims is fluent in 80 programming languages.

Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic in June debuted its updated AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which it said beats OpenAI’s GPT-4 in important tasks and is twice as fast as its previous model, Claude 3 Opus. Claude 3.5 is available online for free and for subscribers.

Where OpenAI’s mission has focused on bringing AI to scale, Anthropic has focused on safety and security. Its co-founders are siblings and former OpenAI employees Daniela and Dario Amodei. The Amodeis left OpenAI in 2020 over concerns that generative artificial intelligence technologies were scaling too quickly without adequate safeguards, and they wanted to build a more trusted model.

Design software giant Adobe revealed a dozen new generative AI tools and capabilities in March.

Among them was GenStudio, an app that lets users create content with generative AI, manage brand assets like logos, track campaign performance, and streamline workflows all in one place — instead of jumping between multiple software tools.

In June, Adobe reported record sales of $5.3 billion for the second quarter, surpassing Wall Street analysts’ expectations due to sky-high demand for its AI products.

Salesforce in April announced the general availability of its chatbot for businesses, Einstein Copilot. Salesforce executives say Einstein Copilot is a lot less likely than other AI chatbots to hallucinate, or generate false or nonsensical information — something that other chatbots from Google, Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI have struggled to overcome.

Its new chatbot isn’t paying off yet, though. Salesforce’s stock had its worst day in 20 years in late May after its first-quarter earnings missed Wall Street’s expectations for the first time in nearly two decades, with sluggish sales linked to weak demand in Europe.