Want to get more insight into AI developments? Then this extensive interview "What if Dario Amodei is right about AI?" between journalist Ezra Klein of The New York Times and Dario Amodei, the founder and CEO of Anthropic, is highly recommended.  

Anthropic is the company behind the leading AI model Claude, a competitor to ChatGPT. Unfortunately, only the limited free version of Claude is available in the Netherlands, not the more powerful Pro version that offers many more features.

When Dario Amodei was still at OpenAI (between 2016-2020), where he was vice president of research, he began to wonder what would happen if you fed AI more and more data. Together with his colleagues, he researched this. They found that AI not only performed better with more data, but that this improvement was exponential. The growth of AI capabilities started slowly at first, but then skyrocketed. This growth curve showed the characteristic shape of a field hockey stick.

Today, Amodei is the CEO of AI company Anthropic. He still believes that AI is growing exponentially. This is based on so-called scaling laws. He thinks we are now in the steep rise of that growth curve.

One of Amodei's predictions is about the development of AI models in the next three months to two years. He believes that a new generation of language models will become available every 4 to 8 months and that AI can start performing complex tasks with 99.9% accuracy. Such as writing code and running tests. These AI agents will be able to perform sequences of 20 to 30 steps accurately, according to Amodei. This is an important step for practical AI applications for multi-step work, as is common in marketing, among others. 

Amodei also predicts that AI models will soon have more personality, while remaining objective and actionable. This could greatly accelerate the adoption of AI, as users will feel more connected to this technology.

Enabling these developments and staying ahead requires massive investments that only a handful of large tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon can afford. According to Amodei, training the current language models costs about $100 million. The new generation of models coming out later this year will easily require $1 billion. And investments run as high as $5 to $10 billion for the models expected in 2025 and 2026! 

The interview was not only about the possibilities of AI, but also the ethical and security challenges. It is crucial that AI models can understand "truth" and ethics. Especially in a world where people do not always agree on what is true.  

This talk highlights the enormous developments and potential of AI, but also makes clear the importance of being prepared for the high rate of change that is predicted.

Want to exchange thoughts on how to implement AI within your marketing team? Let us know, we'd love to help.


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It's almost a weekly pivot as to which tech company comes out with a major AI update. Last week, it was Meta's turn.

With the introduction of their new language model Llama 3, integrated into Meta AI, Meta is taking a huge step forward. It is not yet available in the Netherlands, but Meta AI is a powerful AI assistant that you can use for free within Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and via the website meta.ai.

According to Meta, Llama 3 outperforms other leading AI models such as Google's Gemma and Mistral, and even outperforms Gemini Pro 1.5 and Claude 3 Sonnet on certain tests.

What can you do with Llama 3 & Meta AI? 

Real-time image generation

Impressive is the ability to generate images in real time as you type. As you type, you see an image being created and you can modify it by typing new instructions.

Imagine in the (near) future, being able to generate audio and video this way too!

Searching information

You can use Meta AI for all sorts of practical things, from finding concerts nearby or a particular restaurant to solving math problems.

Integrated into all Meta apps

The AI is directly accessible through the Meta.ai website and is integrated into search functions within Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. This makes it easy to get real-time information without switching between apps. 

Meta offers Meta AI with Llama 3 for free and as open source. Most other AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude have paid subscriptions for their most powerful models. And those are not open-source.

An advantage of open source is that the technology becomes more accessible and available to all. A disadvantage is potential security risks and misuse, due to lack of oversight.

Meta's approach is, on the one hand, a strategic move against competitors. On the other hand, Meta's aim is to encourage innovation and expand their networks.


Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

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Microsoft has unveiled VASA-1, an advanced AI model that can generate hyper-realistic videos of talking human faces with just a photo and audio clip.

As this example shows, the videos show accurate lip-synching, facial expressions and natural head movements making them seem very real.

An interesting development, but beware: deepfakes are becoming increasingly convincing. How will you recognize them soon?

Read more about VASA-1 and see more examples here.

For now, this is only a demonstration; there is no product or release plan yet.


Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Recently, remarkable statements by Sam Altman, the top executive of OpenAI, came out that highlight major implications for the marketing world.

During an interview with Adam Brotman and Andy Sack for Our AI Journey, Sam Altman clarifies exactly what he means by AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which he often talks about. According to him, this is "when AI will be able to independently achieve new scientific breakthroughs." He expects this to be a reality within "5 years, more or less, maybe a little longer - but no one knows exactly when or what it will mean for society."

The impact of AGI on marketing was also discussed. Altman believes AI is in the future:

"95% of the current work of marketers, strategists and creative professionals will be handled easily, almost instantly, and at almost no cost by the AI - and the AI will likely be able to test the creative work against real or fictional customer focus groups for predicting results and optimization. All free, instant, and nearly perfect. Images, videos, campaign ideas? No problem."

This again makes it clear that we are only in the early stages of the AI era, with many changes ahead.

These statements got us thinking about the current state of AI and the direction we are headed. Although Altman mentioned marketing as an example, it actually relates to all forms of knowledge work, such as sales, service, HR, accounting, engineering, legal, etc.

To get a good understanding of how the near future will change and what steps we can expect, I have compiled an overview of the AI developments that experts foresee in the coming years.


2024 - Introduction of multimodal language models.

  • Advanced larger language models (LLMs): Introducing multimodal models that can understand language, images, video and audio, such as Google's Gemini.
  • Improvement in memorization and reasoning: Great progress in the ability of language models to remember information(ChatGPT test already with a 'memory' function), solve problems, plan and make decisions.
  • Expanded context windows: Language models with a much larger context window, with improvement in memory and AI personalization. Google's Gemini, for example, now has an impressively large context window of 1 million tokens. Moreover, Google reports that in their research they have already reached a context window of 10 million tokens. This refers to the amount of information the model can use to generate its output. In general, the higher the number of tokens, the better the language model performs.
  • Personalized interaction: The ability for AI tools to personalize interactions based on individual user interactions.
  • Reliability and accuracy: AI models are becoming more reliable and accurate. You can really start to trust them.
  • Introduction of GPT-5: The introduction of more powerful language models with many more features, such as GPT-5 (the successor to GPT-4), Gemini 2 and Llama 3 and other similar models. These next versions will enable multimodal reasoning, planning, decision making, extended context window, memory, personalization and better reliability. 

2025 - 2026: Disruption of knowledge work becomes more tangible

As a result of more powerful language models being introduced in 2024, the disruption of knowledge work will begin to become more tangible in 2025 or 2026.

  • Multimodal becomes common: It will take some time for multimodal language models to learn how to use all kinds of media, but these models are expected to start working really well from 2025 when you talk to them and interact with them through videos, images, audio and text.
  • Increase in synthetic data: The increasing use of AI-generated images (such as photos' and videos), which were not captured by cameras in the real world, but were generated by computer software. 
  • An explosion of AI agents: AI agents are AI systems that can take actions for you. We will probably have the ability to fine-tune and train these AI agents to do just about all the knowledge work that we do now. And we'll probably also have AI agents that won't need to be trained at all. They will just watch what you do, learn it, and then start doing it.

To give you an idea of how an AI agent works, meet

Devin. This autonomous agent from the company Cognition, has been called the "first AI software engineer," scoring 13.86% on the SWE-Bench programming test (a benchmark for evaluating large language models based on real software problems). This far exceeds previous records of 4.80% (Claude 2) and 1.74% (GPT-4).

Devin has even passed practical engineering interviews at leading AI companies and independently completed real assignments through Upwork (an online platform that connects freelancers and clients).

2026 - 2030: The Robotics Explosion

With the speed at which AI is developing, it is difficult to look years ahead. But after AI agents, we can probably expect the robotics explosion.

  • Robotics explosion: A significant advance in robotics made possible by the integration of advanced AI models.
  • Impact on labor: We are first going to see a lot of impact of AI on knowledge work in the coming years. But once robots have their "ChatGPT moment," AI will begin to impact all other forms of labor as well.

We are already seeing major advances in robotics. One example is the collaboration between OpenAI and Figure, a leading robotics startup. They are working to put multimodal language models into real robots. See an example below.

Throughout this timeline, we are moving toward a new reality that people like Altman believe is headed toward: AGI ((Artificial General Intelligence), or artificial general intelligence. This is AI capable of performing any intellectual task a human can, with understanding and reasoning ability. And will also be able to independently achieve new scientific breakthroughs.

Top experts disagree about when AGI is coming - or even whether it is possible at all. It may happen slowly in stages, rather than all at once, but when it does, it will have profound consequences.

Even if AGI does not become possible, it is important to pay attention to where this is all going. Even without AGI, we are going to have access to multimodal models and AI agents that are many times more capable than the AI capabilities we have today. That alone is going to change everything.

Legislation will also play a defining role in the development of AI, such as the European AI Act that was finally passed last week. This law regulates what is prohibited and what applications of artificial intelligence are allowed, albeit under strict conditions. 

Either way, it's time to start preparing for big changes.

Preparing for AI developments

What actions can you take to prepare:

  1. Establish an AI steering committee: Create a multidisciplinary team to lead the development and implementation of AI strategies in your organization. This group will act as "discoverers" of new AI capabilities.
  2. Create an internal and external AI policy for your organization. This ensures that you are using AI in a way that is consistent with clear agreements and expectations. It also prevents AI from being used in an irresponsible or undesirable way without internal knowledge. You can use this template AI policy as a foundation.
  3. Map the impact of AI on your organization and create an AI implementation roadmap. You can use this template AI Marketing Scan as an example and starting point for your own scan.

Want to exchange thoughts on how to implement AI within your marketing team? Let me know, we'd love to help.

Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Late last year, I wrote that by 2024, the development of AI would continue to accelerate, resulting in large-scale experimentation and adoption. AI will become an integral part of most of the systems we use every day, playing an increasingly important role in our lives.

This first quarter, we have already seen concrete examples of this acceleration. For example, last week I shared the example of AI in customer service. Klarna Bank launched its AI assistant, developed by OpenAI, globally a month ago, replacing most of their customer service. This AI assistant takes over the work of 700 full-time employees and handled 2.3 million calls in one month.

Last week, Salesforce introduced Einstein Copilot, an advanced AI solution for CRM. If you're a Salesforce user, you can start exploring the beta version soon. If you're not a user, see this as an example of what you can start to expect from AI integrations within CRM systems and how you can start deploying it. 

Salesforce Einstein makes advanced AI technologies available to personalize and optimize customer interactions, work more efficiently and ultimately increase sales and customer satisfaction. For example, you can "talk" to your CRM system just as you do with ChatGPT, with the AI assistant responding based on all the data available in the system.

What can Salesforce Einstein do?

  • Predictive analytics: Provides insights about sales, service and marketing, such as which leads are likely to convert or which customers are at risk of dropping out.
  • Automated recommendations: Automatically makes suggestions for next steps, such as optimizing marketing campaigns or personalizing customer interactions.
  • Natural language processing (NLP): Can interpret human language, which enables answering customer questions via chatbots.
  • Image recognition: Einstein Vision can analyze images within CRM data, useful for scenarios such as recognizing brand logos on social media.
  • Email and calendar integration: Enables intelligent integration with e-mail and calendars, making it easier to schedule appointments and offer suggestions on e-mail responses.

View a detailed explanation of all functionalities and how Einstein can be used for Sales, Service, Marketing, Commercial and Analysis.

Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week


Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Many companies are experimenting with deploying AI and more and more examples of applications are coming out.

A month ago, for example, Klarna Bank launched its AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, worldwide. With already impressive results: 

  • The AI assistant has made 2.3 million calls (this is two-thirds of all chats handled by Klarna's customer service).
  • The assistant does the work of 700 full time employees.
  • In terms of customer satisfaction score, it is equivalent to human employees.
  • It is more accurate in solving problems, leading to 25% fewer repeated queries.
  • Customers now solve their problems in less than 2 minutes, compared with 11 minutes previously.
  • The assistant is available 24/7 in 23 countries and communicates in more than 35 languages.
  • It is estimated that this will generate a $40 million profit improvement for Klarna by 2024!

Klarna has integrated this AI assistant into their app to improve the user experience for their 150 million consumers worldwide. The assistant offers a wide range of services, including multilingual support, handling refunds and returns, and encouraging responsible financial behavior.

This introduction is seen by Klarna as a major step forward in their vision of a fully AI-powered financial assistant designed to save consumers time, worry and money, while making the global banking industry more efficient and consumer-focused.


Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said:

"This breakthrough in AI for customer interaction means superior experiences for our customers at better prices, more interesting challenges for our employees and better returns for our investors. We are incredibly excited about this launch, but it also underscores the profound impact AI will have on society.

We want to emphasize and encourage society and politicians to consider this carefully. Thoughtful, informed and stable management will be crucial to navigate through this transformation of our societies."

In an interview early last year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, already expressed the expectation that customer service is one of the areas in which there will be far fewer jobs in the near future. An example such as Klarna's AI assistant underscores this expectation, and numerous other examples will follow this year.

See what aspects of marketing you can use AI for here.

Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week


Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Today OpenAI introduced Sora, their impressive text-to-video model. With Sora, you can very easily generate videos up to a minute long based on a text instruction you provide as a user. 

See below an example of a video created from the text instruction:

"A litter of golden retriever puppies playing in the snow. Their heads pop out of the snow, covered in."

Or how about this one:

'Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.' 

Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of movements and accurate details of the subject and background. The model understands not only what the user has requested in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.

The model has a deep understanding of language, enabling it to accurately interpret prompts and generate compelling characters that express vivid emotions. Sora can also create multiple shots within a single generated video that accurately preserve characters and visual style.

Sora was only made available to a select group of users yesterday, but is being rolled out incrementally. 

See more video previews and information about Sora here.

Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week


Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Recent research from BrightEdge shows that Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) is going to fundamentally change the way we search, a "Searchquake" in the digital world! It is critical that companies prepare for the impact SGE will have on brand visibility and customer behavior.

SGE allows you to perform searches more efficiently by instantly providing comprehensive answers, reducing the need for multiple searches and clicking through to websites. In this regard, AI acts as a bridge between your content and the Google user.

For example, we are going to see that AI can simulate a complete shopping experience, guiding visitors step by step without requiring them to leave the search engine.

The rise of zero-click experiences has far-reaching implications for search behavior and Google ads.

The study shows that 84% of Google searches will be affected by SGE and that the healthcare, e-commerce and B2B technology sectors will be most affected. 

SGE makes the visibility of Web sites in search results more complex, which can lead to a decrease in the number of visitors to your Web site through search engines. However, the visitors you still attract may be more valuable and engaged.

The shift to SGE is not just Google's next algorithmic change. It is the most significant search engine change ever and represents a profound change that will affect every industry, every business and every marketer.

It is essential that you adjust your SEO strategy and website experience accordingly. To prepare for SGE, here are some action items:

  1. Strengthen E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness):
    • Expertise: Show that the content on your website was created by people with in-depth knowledge of the topic. For example, share extensive biographies of authors and relevant qualifications. 
    • Experience: Share evidence of practical and relevant experience, such as case studies or customer stories.
    • Authoritativeness: Gain authority through recognition from leading websites and achieving certain certifications or standards.
    • Trustworthiness: Secure your website, be transparent in communication and collect positive reviews.
  2. Optimize for conversational search and long-tail keywords:
    • Use natural colloquialisms in your content.
    • Anticipate literal questions from your audience and integrate them into your content.
    • Write in the second person to create a personal dialogue.
    • Enrich your content with storytelling and interactive elements such as chatbots.
    • Be clear and concise in your message.
  3. Integrate multimedia content:
    • Use videos, podcasts and infographics to make answers more lively.
  4. Analyze search intent:
    • Track how search intentions change and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
  5. Build your online reputation:
    • Collect customer reviews and mentions in leading publications.
  6. Provide contextual relevance:
    • Create in-depth and informative content that not only answers questions, but also understands the broader context.
  7. Stay flexible:
    • Be prepared to adapt your strategies to the rapidly evolving digital marketing world.

By applying these recommendations, you will ensure that your SEO strategy and website experience are ready for the future of search with SGE, and provide a more valuable experience to your visitors.

Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

Google yesterday launched their most advanced Ultra language model under the name Gemini Advanced. In addition, they changed the name Bard to Gemini.

What is Gemini Advanced and what are the initial experiences?

Gemini Advanced

Gemini Advanced provides access to Google's most powerful AI model: Ultra 1.0. With this, it offers many more capabilities on highly complex tasks including:

  • Programming
  • Logical reasoning
  • Following nuanced instructions
  • Creative collaboration

In addition, Gemini Advanced offers the ability to upload files, documents, data and more for deeper analysis. And it integpricing with Google apps such as Gmail, Maps and YouTube. You can communicate with Gemini via text, your voice or images.

Google indicates that Gemini Advanced will continue to expand in the coming months with new and exclusive features, such as increased context length, expanded multimodal capabilities, and even better programming features.

A Gemini app has also been launched, however it is not yet available in the Netherlands. The browser version is available in the Netherlands though, which you can use to test Gemini Advanced right now. However, it seems that we cannot use the optimized version at this time. Google also indicates that Ultra 1.0 is only available and optimized for English, but can answer in the other languages such as Dutch.

My initial test results showed that Gemini Advanced is not currently equivalent to ChatGPT4.

The first test was a question about current events. 

Here Gemini failed completely, while ChatGPT-4 gave an accurate answer. 

During testing, I was sitting on the couch and took a picture of 2 tennis balls lying next to me and put there by our dog. To use this to test recognizing and giving context to an image. See below the response of Gemini Advanced versus GPT4.

n this example, a clear difference can also be seen between Gemini Advanced and ChatGPT-4, where the latter (except for text recognition), recognizes the context of the image very well and Gemini has very limited success in this. 🤨

A follow-up question to test the contextual power of both tools was "how do you think those balls got on the bench?

Again, ChatGPT-4 gives a very correct answer, where Gemini's answer is very general. 

A subsequent test with an image gave similar results and clearly shows the current quality difference between Gemini Advanced and ChatGPT-4.

Fortunately, Gemini itself also states "I'm still in the midst of development, so it's possible I haven't seen everything shown in the image." but it's clear that Gemini still has quite a few strokes to make, which I'm sure will happen in the near future. 

In any case, it is definitely worthwhile to go test Gemini and experiment what it can already do and repeat this regularly. You can test Gemini Advanced for free for 2 months now, after that the cost is Euro 21.99 per month per user. 


Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.

The new year has barely begun and the beacons in the AI landscape are already being moved. OpenAI introduced two interesting developments last Wednesday: the ChatGPT Team subscription as well as the GPT Store. These extensions are an important step in accelerating the adoption of advanced AI technologies.

Let's look at how these innovations can transform the way we work and communicate.

ChatGPT Team

The ChatGPT Team subscription can accommodate up to 149 users, which means you can now easily use a shared ChatGPT environment with your entire team.

You can manage users and team data and chats remain private as they are not used for language model training.

All the benefits of ChatGPT Plus are included, such as access to DALL-E 3, GPT-4 with Vision, and advanced data analysis, but with a significantly larger "context window" of 32,000 tokens. This allows better performance of complex tasks involving extensive conversations or documents.

In addition, it allows team members to develop and share custom GPTs, enabling a whole new form of collaboration and innovation.

You can choose a flexible monthly subscription of $30 per user (starting from 2 users) or a yearly subscription of $25 per user per month. 

Existing ChatGPT users can easily upgrade by logging into their account.


Explore the possibilities with ChatGPT Team

GPT Store

Late last year, OpenAI already introduced the ability to develop your own custom GPTs, such as a "DenisDoelandGPT," for example.

Now individual developers and organizations can offer their own customized GPT models in the GPT Store. This makes them accessible to other users who can thus find specific models to suit their needs.

Discover the GPT Store here.

What are custom GPTs?


GPT stands for "Generative Pre-trained Transformer" and is simply put, a kind of language model for artificial intelligence to generate answers to questions.

Custom GPTs allow you to create your own versions of ChatGPT "without any coding" that combine instructions, additional knowledge and skills.

These GPTs can help you in your daily activities, in specific tasks, for yourself and for your business.

Again, there is a lot to discover and experiment with.


Take a leap forward in your marketing AI transformation every week

Every Friday, we bring you the latest insights, news and real-world examples on the impact of AI in the marketing world. Whether you want to improve your marketing efficiency, increase customer engagement, sharpen your marketing strategy or digitally transform your business, "Marketing AI Friday" is your weekly guide.

Sign up for Marketing AI Friday for free.