AI buzz: Google’s Gemini Ultra and Amazon Titan rumors

A bunch of new anonymous models from Google has been dropped to LMArena recently, as is usually the case before the weekend. It seems like this particular weekend will bring a lot of new contenders. Some of these models are claiming to be the Gemini Ultra model, which was announced a while ago by Google but hasn’t been officially released yet. The codename for this model is Goblin, although it’s unclear how reliable this information is.

Gemini Ultra is generally implied to be a processor designed for vision capabilities, supporting Gemini Live, which was released earlier to mobile apps. Additionally, there are mentions of other Gemini models that might align with something like Gemini Pro or Gemma.

Meanwhile, another model, codenamed Folsom, has been spotted. It claims to be from Amazon and could potentially signal the arrival of Amazon Titan. Amazon Titan is Amazon’s proprietary model, which they’ve been training to reduce reliance on Anthropic, their strategic partner for AWS Bedrock and other solutions. It’s been rumored that Anthropic models will power an upgraded Alexa. Falcon seems to be undergoing testing on LMArena, but its responses are not particularly impressive in terms of intelligence. For example, it struggles with simple tricks like identifying how many “R”s are in the word “strawberry.” However, it demonstrates advanced formatting, which might suggest potential for improvement.

Today also marks the second anniversary of OpenAI ChatGPT. If you say “happy birthday” to O1-preview, it will respond correctly. OpenAI has reportedly been preparing a user-oriented release to celebrate the occasion. It’s still unclear if this release will happen on Saturday or if users will need to wait until Monday, a regular working day. One of the most anticipated updates could be the full release of the O1 model. Let’s see what unfolds.