Three major players in the AI field, OpenAI, Google, and Mistral, have unveiled new versions of their cutting-edge AI models within 12 hours, signalling a burst of innovation anticipated for the summer. Meta's Nick Clegg hinted at the imminent release of Meta's Llama 3 at an event in London, while Google swiftly followed with the launch of its Gemini Pro 1.5, a sophisticated large language model with a limited free usage tier. Shortly after, OpenAI introduced its milestone model, GPT-4 Turbo, which, like Gemini Pro 1.5, supports multimodal input, including images.

In France, Mistral, a startup founded by former Meta AI team members, debuted Mixtral 8x22B, a frontier AI model released as a 281GB download file, following an open-source philosophy. While this approach is criticised for potential risks due to a lack of oversight, it reflects a trend towards democratising access to AI models beyond the control of tech giants like Meta and Google.

Experts caution that the prevailing approach centred on large language models (LLMs) might be reaching its limitations. Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, challenges the notion of imminent artificial general intelligence (AGI) and emphasises the need for AI systems capable of reasoning and planning beyond language manipulation. LeCun advocates for a shift towards 'objective-driven' AI to achieve truly superhuman capabilities, thereby highlighting the ongoing evolution and challenges in the AI landscape.