A Brief History of Generative AI. How did we get to where we are today in…

How did we get to where we are today in the field of generative AI? Generative AI will be the most disruptive technological innovation since the advent of the personal computer and the inception of the Internet with the potential to create 10s of millions of new jobs, permanently alter the way we work, fuel the creator economy, and displace or augment 100s of millions of workers in roles from computer programmers to computer graphics artists, photographers, video editors, digital marketers and yes, even journalists. Even with all the hype around generative AI this year, it's true power has not yet been seen or felt, in 2023 there will be significant innovations that will begin a revolution that will leave no industry or job function un-impacted in one way or another. Although Generative AI has been a focused area of AI research since 2014, it really took off in the latter half of 2022 when the technology was put into the hands of consumers with the release of several text-to-image model services like MidJourney, Dall-E 2, Imagen, and the open-source release of Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. This was quickly followed up by OpenAI's ChatGPT which mesmerized consumers with a version of GPT-3 re-trained on conversational dialog that seemingly had an answer for everything and delivered responses in a very human-like manner. At the same time VCs looking for the hot new technology to invest in caught the generative AI bug and both Stability AI and Jasper both became instant unicorns with Series A funding exceeding $100 million.