Justin's AI Newsletter

The most interesting content, news, and insights in AI each week.

--

Hey friends 👋,

This was a huge week in AI. Lots of cool news and experiments.

OpenAI had huge announcements. And at the same time Google invested $2B in their biggest competitor (Anthropic). Meanwhile, an AI wearable launched. Oh, and Elon teased a new AI model based on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It’s an exciting time to be a consumer in AI. With competition and fast-moving innovation, costs will continue to drop and be better for a democratized AI world.

Here are my takeaways from the week...

---

AI FUTURE

🕵️‍♀️ Custom GPTs Are Here: My Take on the Next AI Opportunity

OpenAI's Dev Day came with big news.

Sam Altman announced the launch of "GPTs", custom ChatGPTs you can create using private knowledge. There's also a GPT Store coming with revenue sharing for the highest used GPTs.

While this is exciting, we can't forget about GPT plugins. In March, everyone said this was the the app store of AI. I'm even guilty of getting too excited about this. I thought it was "The Gamechanger".

The takeaway from all of this: we don't know the longevity of the GPT Store or if it's an absolute "gamechanger" because we just don't know what's coming next or what will stay around.

But what we can be sure of is that personalized AI is here for the long term. People have better experiences with AI when the AI is more personalized to their needs.

So here's my advice when it comes to GPTs:

First off, use it. Experiment. Create custom GPTs you think would be useful for yourself and others. Maybe you'll make some money off of it, but more than anything, I think it's a great time to get a glimpse into where we're headed with AI agents.

Fair warning, be aware that any "customized AI models" you make are limited to the OpenAI ecosystem. Your GPTs are locked into ChatGPT. This is fine if you're an individual ChatGPT user, but if you're thinking about exploring more custom AI experiences for employees or businesses, you should be aware of the OpenAI lock-in.

I have no doubt every business should be thinking about building AI experiences for their customers and employees as customizable as possible. And as we've already seen, OpenAI's GPT-4 isn't going to be the only model available. You may want to use Anthropic's Claude for one purpose, OpenAI's GPT-4 for another, and even X's new Grok model for something else (more on Grok below).

The decision now is when building custom GPTs is: do you want to be locked behind the paywalled experience of ChatGPT Plus or be able to experiment with other models?

My answer:

(This fear of OpenAI lock-in was one of my main motivations for starting Cassidy, which lets you create custom AI agents using any AI model out there. Newsletter subscribers receive early access to Cassidy, so simply reply to this email with more details about your business, and I'll personally set you up!)

Ok onto more AI news.

---

AI NEWS

🤯 Humane launches AiPin

Super-secretive startup Humane launched their $699 AiPin this week, aiming to be an AI-powered smartphone alternative.

"Beyond touch, beyond screens," reads Humane's website.

You can ask your Ai Pin anything anywhere and at anytime using just your voice while holding the touchpad. While Humane's team is largely ex-Apple, I'm not sure how Steve Jobs would feel about this one...

"Even if I had all the power of my iPhone in a screen-less device I wouldn't use it. We are visual creatures," tweeted Figma designer Jordan Singer. I hate to say it, but I'm with Jordan on this one.

While I don't think Humane's AiPin is perfect, I think it's a great experiment and is paving the path forward towards AI-powered wearables. Looking forward to future iterations.

---

🤪 X (Twitter) teases AI model Grok

Elon's team over at xAI launched Grok, their AI model that seems to have a lot more personality than ChatGPT.

Grok is model after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy so it's intended to answer "almost anything" with a bit of humor and wit. And in a conversation with Lex Fridman this week, Elon said that one of the big goals of xAI is to "understand the universe."

So is the main advantage of Grok that it will answer spicy questions that more G-Rated AI platforms won't? Perhaps. But XAI says Grok's competitive advantage comes down to the fact it has real-time knowledge of the world via 𝕏 aka Twitter — meanwhile OpenAI is struggling to obtain more data and just launched a data partnerships program to fix that. In fact, Grok is so integrated with 𝕏 you need a verified account to get early access. So maybe that Elon purchase isn't looking so stupid right about now...

---

⭐ AI Quick Hits

1. Bill Gates has been thinking about AI agents for 30+ years and now the time is finally here. [Read here]​
2. Snap released Lens Studio 5.0, their latest AR development software with ChatGPT capabilities. [Read here]​
3. Figma added an AI integration into its collaborative tool Figjam so you can generate templates, diagrams, and more in seconds. [Read here]​
4. IBM just launched a $500M enterprise AI venture fund to invest in b2b generative AI startups. [Read here]​
5. Instagram is reportedly developing a customizable AI friend. [Read here]​

Stay tuned for more next week...

---

Thanks for reading,

Justin

​

P.S. Want more quick, hot AI takes?

Be sure to follow me on Twitter! 🔥🤖

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205

If you'd like to update your email settings, choose one of the options below.

1) Unsubscribe from my weekly newsletter.

2) Unsubscribe to be removed from all future mailings, including occasional and highly important AI updates. That'll make me sad. But hey... I get it. You're busy. Just know that once you click this link you won't receive any more emails from me.

Other Preferences​