The AI Wars Heat Up: OpenAI vs. Google in the Race for AI Dominance

Welcome, humans.

Discover how ChatGPT 4o, the supercharged AI assistant, is revolutionizing communication with real-time, multi-modal interactions. Get the latest scoop from Google I/O 2024, where cutting-edge AI innovations are set to transform everyday life. Plus, explore the rise of Lil Miquela, the virtual influencer reshaping the digital landscape and making millions. Cache Cookies delivers your weekly dose of groundbreaking tech news, cool apps, brain-boosting knowledge, the latest on AI, and the lowdown on AI's wild side.

What You Need to Know About AI this week

• Never Get Lost in Translation Again with ChatGPT 4o 🌍🗣️🤖

• Your Future, Your Future, Supercharged by AI: Google I/O Unveils the Next Wave 🚀🤖 

• Lil Miquela: The Virtual Influencer Making Millions (and Why You Should Care) 🤑

ChatGPT 4o: The AI Assistant That Speaks Your Language (Literally!)

ChatGPT has been upgraded to GPT-4o (“o” for “omni”), a supercharged AI assistant that understands and responds to text, audio, images, and video in real time. It's like having a personal Siri or Alexa, but even faster and more versatile. With GPT-4o, OpenAI is revolutionizing human-computer interaction. This cutting-edge technology is available for free to all users through the GPT app and web interface, with additional benefits for paid subscribers.

Why Does It Matter to Me 🦎 ?

Traveling to a country where you don't speak the language? Fear not! The new GPT-4o offers real-time translation between any languages, ensuring seamless communication wherever you go. No matter your origin language—be it English, French, Italian, German, or even Swiss German—ChatGPT Omnia has you covered.  

Need a personal assistant? GPT-4o can help you schedule appointments, book services, and even handle customer service interactions on your behalf.

Google I/O 2024: AI-Powered Upgrades for Your Everyday Life

The AI revolution is gaining momentum. Just one day after OpenAI revealed GPT-4o, Google I/O 2024 introduced a series of groundbreaking AI advancements that are going to be rollout this year. Among the most exciting announcements is Project Astra, Google's first "AI-for-everything" agent. Astra will be available on smartphones, desktops, and possibly even smart glasses, allowing users to interact via audio and video. This means you will have an advanced AI assistant able to comment, help you, answer your questions, translate, and more, based on everything it sees and hears.

Other than Project Astra, the main Google announcements include AI Overviews in Google Search for concise summaries of complex queries, the Gemini feature in Gmail to search, summarize, and draft emails, as well as take action on emails, Gemini 1.5 Pro and Flash for Developers for enhanced AI capabilities through the Gemini API. Additionally, Gemini for Android offers a personalized AI assistant experience, and scam calls detection tool. Finally, Veo is a generative video model capable of creating high-quality videos from text prompts. Please check our latest Instagram post for more details and information on what is already available in Switzerland.

Why Does It Matter to Me 🦎 ?

Google's announcements paint a future where creating stunning marketing videos for your small business with Veo or confidently answering unknown callers without fear of scams, thanks to your trusty Android phone, becomes the norm. Your work emails could practically write themselves with a little help from Gmail's AI assistant, and planning your next vacation could be a breeze with AI-powered search results summarizing the best options. Soon, you’ll be able to ask Google Search to make meal and travel suggestions, plan recipes, and even prepare for job interviews or important speeches. The future of work and daily life is looking bright, wouldn't you say?

 Where are the Cache 🦎 Cookies 🍪 ?

Tech companies are fiercely competing for AI supremacy, with AI agents being the latest effort from Big Tech firms to showcase their advancements. These agents also support the narrative of many tech companies, including OpenAI and Google DeepMind, aiming to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), a highly speculative concept of superintelligent AI systems.

"Eventually, you’ll have this one agent that really knows you well, can do lots of things for you, and can work across multiple tasks and domains," says Chirag Shah, a professor at the University of Washington specializing in online search.

This idea could become reality with devices like Google's smart glasses, offering a glimpse into a future where AI seamlessly integrates into our daily lives. For instance, smart glasses could translate languages in real-time while traveling, remind you of your spouse’s favorite coffee order as you approach a bistro, or pull up a colleague's name during a chance encounter to avoid awkwardness. While these capabilities could enhance productivity, they also raise concerns about dependency and privacy. Would we become too reliant on technology, forgetting even simple tasks? Moreover, imagine being at a social gathering where someone with these glasses can discreetly record conversations or identify everyone in the room through facial recognition. This could make people feel constantly surveilled and uncomfortable, knowing that their actions and words might be captured and analyzed without their consent.

Weekly Quote    

Want to dive deeper and hear Swisher's sharp wit? Check out Kara Swisher's new book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, and listen to a relevant episode of The New Yorker Podcast (around 26 minutes) featuring insider news about tech giants and exploring how AI companies leverage the entire internet.

🏆 AVATAR OF THE WEEK

Miquela Sousa, better known as Lil Miquela, is a 19-year-old virtual influencer of Brazilian and Spanish descent, based in Los Angeles. Created in 2016 by Trevor McFedries and Sara Decou, the co-founders of Brud, she has millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. She generates an average of $2 million per year by collaborating with renowned brands such as Dior, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Prada, BMW and Samsung.

But what is a virtual influencer? It is a digital character created by graphics software, with a personality and acting on social networks. Lil Miquela, for example, uses AI algorithms for her interactions and CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) technology for her visual content, under human supervision to ensure brand harmony.

In 2023, a study in the United States revealed that 58% of respondents followed a virtual influencer. This trend responds to two needs of influencer marketing:

• A saving of time and resources: hiring a virtual influencer is significantly cheaper than hiring celebrities for endorsements, while offering similar or even superior results. For example, the company behind Lil Miquela charges $9,000 per post compared to over $250,000 for human influencers with over a million followers.

• Greater control over the image and message conveyed to the audience: Virtual influencers reduce the reputational risk for brands by avoiding the scandals and misbehavior associated with human influencers.

As these AI avatars become increasingly sophisticated, the line between reality and virtual is blurring, raising questions about their influence on our behavior. Ranked among the 25 most influential personalities on the internet by Time magazine, Lili Miquela is the perfect example of this growing trend.

Opportunités d’emploi

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