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Technology

2023 was the year that artificial intelligence went mainstream

From ChatGPT to Gemini, this year was dominated by large language models and other AIs becoming everyday tools used by millions of people

By Alex Wilkins

13 December 2023

2RF6WE0 FOTOMONTAGE, Miniatur-Roboter auf einer Computerplatine mit dem Schriftzug ChatGPT

ChatGPT emerged as the front-runner among a wave of AIs with wide-ranging abilities

Bildagentur-online/Ohde/​Alamy

IT WAS hard to avoid artificial intelligence in 2023, with the vertiginous rise of chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs). By February, OpenAI’s ChatGPT had become the fastest-growing app of all time. By the year’s end, it had become an everything machine: browsing the internet, interpreting pictures, generating any requested image and inserting itself into many existing tools and services – and it wasn’t the only AI to do so.

“Where the technology is going next is clearly to be more multimodal,”…

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