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France's open ChatGPT competitor
PLUS: Perplexity launches AI-powered shopping
Rowan Cheung
November 19, 2024
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
From outperforming top models to offering cutting-edge features for free, Mistral continues to make bold moves.
Could the French startup's latest open powerhouse release mark the beginning of an AI power shift away from Silicon Valley? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Mistral’s new multimodal powerhouse
Perplexity launches AI-powered shopping
Create AI presentations with customized visuals
ChatGPT outperforms doctors in diagnostic challenge
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
MISTRAL AI
Image source: Mistral
The Rundown: French AI startup Mistral just released Pixtral Large, a 124B parameter multimodal model that marks the company’s most advanced AI system yet — also transforming its Le Chat platform into a comprehensive workspace rival.
The details:
Pixtral Large outperforms top models on math reasoning and real-world tasks, also beating Gemini 1.5 Pro and GPT-4o on chart and document understanding.
The model features a 128K context window capable of simultaneously processing 30 high-res images or a 300-page book.
Mistral’s Le Chat platform gains new features, such as web search, document analysis, and image generation (powered by Black Forest Labs’ Flux Pro).
A new Canvas feature enables real-time content creation and editing, similar to recent releases from OpenAI and Anthropic.
The model is available under research and commercial licenses, while Le Chat's new features are free during beta.
Why it matters: Mistral's release shows just how narrow the gap between open and closed AI models is getting. While U.S. companies have dominated the space, Mistral's emergence as Europe's AI champion — while offering freely accessible state-of-the-art capabilities — signals a potentially major shift in the industry's competitive landscape.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
The Rundown: Maximize your workplace potential with HubSpot’s ChatGPT guide – your roadmap to AI-driven success for curious minds.
With this guide, you’ll learn to:
Streamline daily tasks with AI, from inbox management to product planning
Apply ChatGPT effectively and ethically in our work environment
Stay ahead of the curve by integrating AI tools into your skill set
Download your free guide now and start transforming your workday with ChatGPT.
PERPLEXITY
Image source: Perplexity
The Rundown: Perplexity just introduced a new shopping experience for its Pro users in the United States, allowing users to leverage AI to research, identify, and buy products directly on the platform.
The details:
The system goes beyond basic product search, understanding complex queries like "stuff I need for a disco party" and providing curated recommendations.
Pro subscribers get a "Buy with Pro" feature with free shipping, allowing one-click purchases without leaving Perplexity's interface.
A new "Snap to Shop" tool lets users photograph real-world items and instantly find them online.
Unlike traditional e-commerce sites, recommendations are currently unsponsored and driven purely by AI analysis of product information.
Why it matters: AI has already been infused into the search giants, but this move is a direct shot at users' traditional process when researching a product to buy. As we’ve seen with search engines, the challenge will be maintaining truly unbiased recommendations and avoiding the commercial allure of ads.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Gamma lets you choose among multiple AI image generators, each optimized for different visual styles and content types, helping you create the perfect presentation visuals.
Step-by-step:
Sign up for a free Gamma account and log in to your dashboard.
Select “Create new”, choose “Presentation”, and pick the number of cards.
After generating your initial outline, locate the image model selector in settings.
Choose from options like Playground 2.5 (vivid illustrations), Flux Fast (quick generation), or Imagen 3 (detailed instructions).
Preview different styles in your presentation and download it when ready.
Pro tip: Use Flux Pro 1.1 for professional-quality faces and people in your presentations or Ideogram to have legible text in your visuals.
SPONSORED BY SALESFORCE
The Rundown: Agentforce delivers AI agents designed to make your life easier, take action using advanced reasoning to resolve customer cases, qualify leads, and optimize marketing campaigns — all directly within Salesforce.
With Agentforce, you can:
Leverage AI agents that take action, not just chat
Automate processes without complex data integrations
Build customer trust, providing efficient and secure experiences
Enhance productivity, as agents handle tasks on your behalf
Learn more about Agentforce and start redefining your AI today.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown
The Rundown: A new study from the UVA Health System revealed that ChatGPT-4 achieved significantly better diagnostic accuracy than physicians working alone or with AI assistance, challenging assumptions about how AI tools should integrate into medical practice.
The details:
The study tested 50 physicians across multiple hospitals, with each doctor given an hour to provide diagnoses and explanations for several case studies.
The AI scored 90% accuracy on complex medical cases, while doctors using ChatGPT scored 76%, and those without AI scored 74%.
The study noted that many doctors didn't utilize the AI's full capabilities, treating it more like a search engine than a diagnostic partner.
Researchers also found doctors often dismissed ChatGPT's suggestions when they conflicted with the physicians' initial diagnoses.
Results remained consistent across different experience levels, from residents to attending physicians
Why it matters: This study challenges assumptions about AI as just a helper tool for doctors. An older GPT-4 model outperforming physicians (even those using AI) suggests we need to rethink how the tech is integrated into medical practice and effectively teach doctors to collaborate with a powerful new diagnostic partner.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🦎 Gecko Security - AI-powered security engineer that finds and fixes vulnerabilities in your code
👁️ TurboLens - Fast, accurate OCR & insights from any image, with support for handwritten text, formulas, and translations
⚡️ Locofy - AI-powered frontend development with lightning-fast design-to-code conversion
⚙️ KitOps - Simple, secure, and reproducible packaging for AI/ML projects
💻 Tips IO - Generate beautiful websites in seconds with zero code using AI
🖥️ The Rundown - Full Stack Developer
💼 OpenAI - Strategic Finance Senior Analyst
☁️ Dataiku - Site Reliability Engineer, Cloud
📈 Glean - Commercial Sales Manager
🤝 Mistral AI - User Care Expert
QUICK HITS
Free event: Building an AI-Native University. How are universities embracing AI’s potential and preparing for its challenges? RSVP for free.*
ElevenLabs debuted customizable conversational AI agents on its developer platform, allowing users to build voice-enabled bots with flexible language models and knowledge bases.
Microsoft unveiled BiomedParse, a GPT-4-powered AI system capable of analyzing medical imagery to identify various conditions, from tumors to COVID-19 infections, through simple text prompts.
The National Institutes of Health introduced TrialGPT, an AI algorithm that matches patients to clinical trials with the same accuracy as human clinicians, reducing screening time by 50%.
Google.org launched a $20M funding initiative to accelerate AI-driven scientific breakthroughs, offering academic and nonprofit organizations cloud credits and technical support.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is joining San Francisco mayor-elect Daniel Lurie's transition team as a co-chair, signaling the new administration's push to strengthen ties with the tech industry.
*Sponsored listing
THAT’S A WRAP
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
See you soon,
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