Year end AI wrap - what happened in the Industry throughout the year?
- Neha Anand
- Dec 20, 2024
- 4 min read
This year was truly a breakthrough in the AI space. You might be wondering: why this year, especially when most of the groundbreaking AI innovations like GPT and Gemini emerged back in 2022? A breakthrough happens when a new technology or innovation not only captures attention but dominates it almost instantly. This year, Generative AI (GenAI) did just that.
It touched almost every industry and every business be it - big or small - or any scale, leaving its mark everywhere. GenAI became an integral part of everyone’s life, securing its place despite all the criticism, love, or hate. Regardless of the debate, it endured and stayed relevant. Ultimately, it established itself as indispensable, making people realize that it’s here to stay, no matter what.
In this article, I am going to summarise a few innovations and announcements that kept the AI momentum ON and kept influencing the overall AI story.
January: A Fascinating Start with Fingerprint Revelation - not every fingerprint is unique
This year kicked off with a fascinating discovery in the AI evolution - AI researchers found that fingerprints from different fingers of the same person share subtle similarities. This shook up the long-held belief that every fingerprint is entirely unique, opening up new possibilities (and debates) in forensic science.
February: Lot of beta upgrades and previews came in light along with a few voice assistants
Gemini 1.5: In February, a lot of things happened, like Google came up with Gemini 1.5 limited beta, capable of context length up to 1 million tokens.
Sora: Text-to-video model, limited research preview was launched for designers, and art enthusiasts.
March: IndiaAI Mission, Smart Agree, Smart Recycling and Smart City Projects AND NVIDIA's new AI chip, Blackwell
In March 2024, the Indian government, cabinet allocated INR 10,354 crore to the IndiaAI Mission, signalling a commitment to AI leadership with solutions tailored to national needs. The Indian state governments are advancing AI policies, driving growth and regional projects that position India as a proactive global AI contributor.
Smarter Recycling with AI Recycling got a major upgrade in March, thanks to an AI-powered waste-sorting robot. Capable of recognizing over 500 types of waste, this innovation promises to make recycling more efficient and sustainable—something the planet desperately needs.
NVIDIA dominates AI chip market as rival manufacturers seek footholds
At Nvidia's GTC AI developer conference in March, the chip vendor unveiled designs for its new AI chip, Blackwell, promising increased compute power, support for larger models and enhanced inference capabilities, all with a smaller hardware footprint.
May: Two Game-Changers Revealed Promising Upgrades and Solutions
GPT-4o: OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o, a multimodal AI that works seamlessly in real-time. From generating creative content to analyzing data, it’s setting a new standard for AI applications.
AlphaFold 3: Google introduced the next evolution of its protein-predicting AI. Now, AlphaFold 3 can model proteins, DNA, and RNA interactions, which could revolutionize medicine and drug discovery
June: 'Apple Intelligence' announcement by Apple made waves in June with the launch of “Apple Intelligence.” By integrating ChatGPT-like capabilities into iPhones and Siri, Apple gave users a powerful AI assistant - while prioritizing privacy in its signature way. Relying on a combination of on-device and server processing, it was announced on June 10, 2024, at WWDC 2024, as a built-in feature of Apple's iOS18, iPadOS18, and macOS Sequoia, which were announced alongside Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence is free for all users with supported devices.
August: Healthcare transformations with AI on surge along with fine-tuning models introductions by OpenAI and AI Snap website access to everyone: AI’s role in healthcare took center stage in August. From early disease detection to helping discover new drugs, AI made meaningful contributions to improving patient outcomes, saving lives, and supporting doctors worldwide.
On the other side, OpenAI brought in fine-tuning capabilities for its GPT-4o model, which allowed allows developers to customize their model using own datasets, enhancing overall performance and accuracy on specific use cases.
Mid-journey - AI driven Image generation platform, announced a temporary free trial feature to enhance the user-base.
September with O1. OpenAI introduced the O1 series of reasoning models this month, including a lightweight O1-mini version. These models are designed for decision-making, logic and strategising tasks, an essential component of building autonomous AI agents.
October: A Nobel Prize for AlphaFold - Fulfilling a 50-year-old dream in Chemistry + 10 new autonomous agents introduction by Microsoft to scale up faster
October brought a moment of pride for the AI community as Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold. Their work on predicting protein structures is already transforming how scientists approach diseases and treatments. Fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences.
Microsoft 's new autonomous agents enable customers to move from legacy lines of business applications to AI-first business processes faster.
November: month of showcasing AI advancements : AI ecosystem summits & mixers across the globe
The AI advancements of November 2024 showcase the transformative potential of intelligent tools across industries. From Microsoft’s task-centric agents to NVIDIA’s visual AI innovations and Google Cloud’s agent ecosystem, these developments demonstrate how AI is becoming more collaborative, efficient, and accessible.
For startup founders, developers, and decision-makers, these breakthroughs provide powerful solutions to enhance workflows, drive productivity, and unlock new opportunities in the evolving AI landscape.
December: AI in the Creative Spotlight & AI-Integrations in Search To close out the year, AI cemented its place in the creative industries. From AI-written articles to breathtaking artworks across social media, e-commerce and in individual lives, 2024 saw a surge in AI-generated content that’s now embraced by businesses, artists, and even consumers.
A fundamental shift was observed in the way searches are conducted, and a lot of buzz took place in December, as AI giants began integrating advanced search capabilities directly into their tools.
2024 was a year where AI moved beyond just being a buzzword - it became a transformative force in science, healthcare, creativity, and even global policy. What’s next? Only time will tell, but it’s clear AI is reshaping the world as we know it.
With this, wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2025! Let's achieve, BIGGER and BETTER outcomes together in the upcoming year. DM us for any thoughts, collaborations or joint synergies.
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