2023, The Year that Generative AI Takes Off
Generative AI is a major topic of conversation in not only the tech community but now by consumers and business circles, however it is not a mature technology. The business models for generative AI startups are still evolving and integration of the technology into organizations is not yet practical. However, the technology will continue to see new innovations and new applications in 2023, and it will be a technology to watch for business leaders as they develop and refine their AI strategies.
Generative AI will create new jobs in 2023 and some of the top jobs will be generative AI researcher (those who develop generative models), generative AI engineer (those who integrate generative AI into tools) and a plethora of new jobs for those who know how to use the myriad of generative AI tools available in market, like prompt engineers and generative AI artists.
Companies will integrate generative AI into existing tools, as we have seen with Nvidia, Adobe and others while startups will look to disrupt the status quo and create entire platforms that are built on generative AI. Business leaders will look at how they can increase productivity and how can they monetize generative AI in their organizations.
We are starting into a long journey that will see us move closer and closer to realizing “synthetic reality”, the idea that our digital world is synthetic, generated by AI. Whether it be synthetic social media influencers, synth actors, synthetic music, synthetic art, synthetically produced films including plot, dialog and video content, or synthetically produced video games and books, the possibilities are limitless.
This synthetic reality movement will lead to the “Matrix moment”, that moment in time when we can no longer trust that digital media captures real world events. A moment in time when digitally captured reality and synthetically generated reality will be indistinguishable from one another. Deep fakes are becoming more and more realistic, and the methods used to detect synthetic media are becoming less and less effective. Ultimately no longer being able to trust what we see and hear online will lead to a plethora of social and ethical issues along with a loss of trust in digital media. Cell phone and surveillance footage will no longer be taken at face value and synthetically generated photos, video and audio will be used to make fact out of fiction and distort the truth. The technology will be weaponized and wielded by anyone with a computer and the ultimate harms could be wide reaching, we are on the precipice of something unseen in history and its imperative that new solutions be developed to detect and mitigate the effects of synthetic media, that organizations take responsible steps to mitigate its impacts and that legislation be imposed to curtail the abuse of generative AI.
2023 will be both rewarding and challenging for the field of generative AI.
