We are not even to the end of January and things are Moving at warp speed.
Another who thinks disruption is not in the air is either not paying attention or prefers to stick the proverbial head in the sand. As predicted, things are moving ahead at a pace that is going to obliterate certain industries.
Artificial intelligence is getting a lot of attention, and for good reason. Whether we are closing) in on AGI or not really doesn't matter for the sake of this article. What is important is the tools that are being worked on are consistently improving. We are seeing things that were not imagined by most only a few months ago.
The first cannon ball across the bow was OpenAi with ChatGPT. Since that time, chatbots captured the attention of the world. Now we have most major technology companies involved along with a huge open source community.
This is not where the story ends. In fact, to me, this is just the beginning.
What is even more impressive is what we are seeing with video. Here is where the real game changer resides.
Google Stepping Up
While Sam Altman and OpenAI got a lot of attention, Google flew under the radar. It did get into the act with Bard, which provided a starting point. The follow up, Gemini, seems to be getting good reviews from early peeks. All of this might be the appetizer.
LUMIERE is looking like this could be the basis for Google's next trillion dollars in market capitalization.
This is a platform that is bringing some powerful tools to video generation.
Here is a short video that shows what they are working on.
As we can see, there is both image and text to video. This is no surprise since multiple inputs to video is going to be the norm. From some of the AI researchers I follow, they are saying this is the best they have seen so far.
Does that mean this is going to dominate the industry? Not at all.
It is best to look at these AI endeavors like quarterback contracts in the NFL. The highest paid is that for only a short period of time, Then someone else gets a contract that tops it.
We are seeing all facets of the AI race being nothing more than a jockey for position. Google's lead today might be usurped in a month or two by another company's demonstration.
Broadcast and Media Disruption
Over the past 6 months, I spent a lot of time writing about the broadcast media, including movie industry. This is something that is primed for disruption, on many fronts. The latest with Netflix contracting with the WWE is a sign of how things are transforming.
The reason why this project by Google is so important is because it shows where things are heading. If we consider the text-to-image concept, how does this change the production of films or shows? What happens when a script can be fed into software and a video is pushed out?
Will this happen today? No. We are still in the early stages. However, I put a multi-year timeline on this, something that could be spot on. With the pace of advancement, we certainly could see this causing major issues as early as 2026.
Elon Musk said the amount of compute going to AI is doing a 10x every year. I have no idea if that is accurate but consider the number of H-100s that NVIDIA is pushing out, it would not be surprising. There is a lot of processing going into this arena.
Social video is already one of the hottest things on the Internet. Just consider how much time we spend watching video that is not on broadcast television or part of the established studio system. All the social media platforms see billions of hours of video consumed.
What do you think happens when tools like Google is bringing out hit the mainstream? We will see the quality of social video advance even more. Of course, it is going to require improvements in the technology, which is a given.
The true breakthrough is the fact that Google is not the only one in this game. I have not researched it enough to see who else is focusing a great deal on this but I am sure the usual suspects are involved. We will also have a few others who are not as large also working on things.
We will see a time when anyone who desires can be a media company. Just like blogs gave everyone a platform to post articles, this will offer a similar opportunity. The difference is the technology is a lot more powerful.