Generative AI grows up: Digiday’s 2024 timeline of transformation

January

The year started off with a bevvy of AI-related announcements at CES 2024, where major tech companies and consumer brands touted new tech: AI chips for laptops and phones, smart TVs, voice assistants for cars, AI-enabled beauty products, and retailer activations. A few weeks later, AI took over NRF 2024 with nearly two dozen exhibitors touting AI.

• Agency holding companies also made major announcements. Publicis Groupe debuted its Core AI platform and announced plans to invest €300 million (around $311 million) in AI efforts over three years. WPP announced plans to invest more than $300 million annually into AI technology. 
• Samsung announced a range of new AI features for the Galaxy S24 smartphone, including a partnership with Google for Android’s debut of Circle to Search. (Google also expanded its “conversational” generative AI tools for advertisers.)
• U.S. officials kicked off the year with more pressure on Big Tech, with federal agencies  and Congress exploring ways to curb the potential dangers of AI.
• IBM sought to make a big AI marketing play at the Grammys in collaboration with the Recording Academy.

February 

Taking a page out of crypto’s playbook, tech companies sought to make AI more mainstream with splashy Super Bowl ads from Microsoft, Google, Crowdstrike and Etsy. Other brands ran AI-related marketing adjacent to the big game including Avocados from Mexico, which created a new “GuacAImole” platform using tech from OpenAI that generated recipes and photos based on user-uploaded ingredients. Beyond the Super Bowl, Qualcomm debuted a new sonic logo for its Snapdragon brand as part of a major marketing push for chips powering AI-enabled smartphones, PCs and headsets.

• Pfizer debuted a new generative AI platform called “Charlie,” named after the pharmaceutical giant’s founder.  
• Google rebranded its Bard chatbot to be part of the Gemini brand and debuted various new generative AI tools including ImageFX for images and MusicFX for music.
• The FTC announced new rules to protect people from fraudulent AI impersonations and U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill to criminalize non-conconsensual deepfakes.
• Nearly two dozen tech companies made new voluntary commitments to fight AI-generated election-related misinformation.
• Priceline added new generative AI features with a new AI assistant called Penny to help people plan trips.
• Publishers including the Washington Post sought to make it harder for AI crawlers to scrape content without permission.
• Apple debuted new generative AI apps for its Vision Pro headset with early apps like ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly.

March

After three years and 800 amendments, the European Union’s parliament reached a major milestone passing the AI Act. The sweeping set of AI regulations also came just a week after President Joe Biden talked about the risks of AI deepfakes in his 2024 State of the Union address while publicly pushing Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to “harness the promise of AI to protect us from peril.”

• A Wall Street Journal interview with OpenAI’s then-CTO raised new questions about what content the startup used to train its Sora video model. A few weeks later, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan told Bloomberg that OpenAI was in “clear violation” of YouTube terms if it trained Sora using content on Google’s streaming platform. 
• Stagwell-owned Gale joined the ranks of agencies using their own generative AI platforms with the debut of Alchemy.AI to help with media buying and strategy.
• OpenAI announced the first of many media partnerships in 2024, with Le Monde and Prisa Media as early partners. 
• Vimeo debuted a new AI-powered hub called Vimeo Central to help users create and edit videos using AI.
• A Willy Wonka pop-up in Scotland’s use of AI-generated ads went viral and caused some to accuse the event of false advertising.

April

The budding development of more enterprise-grade updates from major AI players took place at the outset of spring. Cohere released a new LLM for Microsoft Azure and Oracle that promised to improve AI accuracy and expand use to nearly a dozen languages. OpenAI expanded its features for companies to fine-tune and customize AI models, while Amazon announced new enterprise tools through an integration with the French startup Mistral. And Perplexity showed off its plans for enterprise businesses with the debut of Perplexity Pro.

• Competition in the cloud wars heated up. As Google debuted more AI updates at its annual Cloud Next conference — including expanded partnerships with agency holding companies Stagwell and WPP — Snowflake announced a new Marketing Data Cloud with initial partners like Snap and Braze to help with personalization and other parts of marketing.
• Meta introduced Llama 3 and rolled out several updates for its Meta AI chatbot across apps including Facebook, Instagram and a new website version of its ChatGPT rival. 
• Adobe debuted its new Firefly 3 image model to power AI tools for Adobe and other platforms.
• Coca-Cola announced a new five-year $1.1 billion deal with Microsoft focused on generative AI and cloud computing, and debuted a new app called “Coke Sounds” to make AI-generated sounds.
• Yahoo acquired Artifact, an AI news platform founded by Instagram’s co-founders that debuted in 2023.

May

Despite various concerns about copyright infringement, publishers made AI content deals with companies like OpenAI and Google. News Corp and the AP were among the companies to announce new deals with OpenAI, followed by Time a month later. (Dozens of publishers have since signed deals with OpenAI.) DotDash Meredith also joined the growing group of publishers to make a deal with OpenAI, allowing the startup to train with content. However, the deals came just weeks after another major lawsuit was filed against OpenAI on behalf of a group of newspapers owned by Alden Capital.

• At the annual upfront event in New York, major TV networks and streaming platforms touted new ways of using generative AI and machine learning to find and reach new audiences with targeted ads. 
• In the fight to identify and label AI content, TikTok and OpenAI joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity with plans to start auto-labeling AI content — something companies like Google and Meta already agreed to do.
• A24 became the latest company to face criticism for using AI-generated images after it used AI content to promote its new film “Civil War.”
• The Met Gala partnered with OpenAI to create a custom exhibition featuring a chatbot with the persona of the 1930s New York socialite Natalie Potter, but fake AI images of Katy Perry at the event also went viral.
• AI audio startup ElevenLabs previewed a new tool for creating AI-generated music made with a single text prompt.

June

AI video was in the spotlight. Days after OpenAI and Runway partnered with Tribeca Film Festival with screenings of AI-generated shorts, Toys R Us debuted a new AI-generated ad that received a mix of praise and criticism. AI audio also had a busy month, with some AI music startups announcing new platforms and partnerships while others — like Suno and Udio — becoming defendants in lawsuits from major record labels alleging copyright infringement.

• AI made a big splash at Cannes Lions, with various agencies, brands and tech companies using the week to tout new features and partnerships. For example, WPP announced a partnership with Nvidia to create a new AI-powered production studio.
• Several AI companies hired new marketers for their C-suite including Jasper, HeyGen and Ada.
• Perplexity launched its first ad in the form of a fake movie trailer during the NBA finals.
• Getty Images and Picsart announced a new partnership.

July

Tech companies tried to woo the world with AI during the 2024 summer Olympics. Efforts included Alibaba’s free experience in Paris to show off its intelligent shopping assistant, and Microsoft debuted a new campaign showing a range of athletes using Copilot to help enhance human performance. However, Google’s “Dear Sydney” campaign for Gemini faced backlash for its portrayal of a young girl using AI to write fan mail to her favorite athlete. Google also was the “Official Search Partner” of Team USA and worked with NBCUniversal to showcase generative AI through AI audio commentary and integrations with apps like Google Maps and Google Lens.

• Ad-spending on AI-related products was 19 times higher in the first half of 2024 compared with 2023, rising to $107 million from just $5.6 million a year earlier.
• The AI startup Writer released new upgrades for its own AI platform and introduced a new way to build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) into the process to analyze up to 10 million words when developing chat apps. 
• eBay added more AI tools for advertising including one feature that lets sellers use AI to build campaigns around current and emerging marketplace trends. Another tool offers personalized campaign recommendations based on a seller’s listings for a particular day.
• Omnicom debuted a new AI content platform called ArtBotAI that uses large language models to help marketers optimize creative assets for campaigns.
• Canva made headlines with its acquisition of Leonardo.AI, an Australia-based AI image and video startup.
• The U.S. Justice Department announced the findings of an investigation alleging Russian actors used AI-generated images and text to spread election-related misinformation on social media platforms including X (Twitter).

August

State and federal officials spent the summer addressing the risks of AI both related and unrelated to the 2024 elections. Washington state continued its campaign to educate people about election security and warn about AI misinformation, while California lawmakers passed new legislation to require new detection tools and disclosure requirements for AI content. And the FCC explored new rules for AI use in political ads.

• Meta touted the momentum of its Llama AI models, which the company said had grown by 10x since 2023, with total downloads nearing 350 million and 20 million in just the prior month. (Examples of corporate users included AT&T, Spotify, Niantic, DoorDash and Shopify.)
• As the glimmer of AI faded for some industries, ad-funded tech giants claimed they’re already seeing signs that major investments are paying off for advertisers. However, a new Adalytics report raised new questions about the effectiveness of measurement companies’ AI systems. Meanwhile, a separate report from Check My Ads shed light on made-for-advertising content that included AI-generated obituaries.
• The US Tennis Association served up new AI features at the 2024 US Open powered by IBM’s Watsonx platform.
• A month after announcing a new publisher partnership program, Perplexity’s advertising pitch deck made the round with marketers and sparked new curiosity about the future of ads on the platform.
• As the AI search race gained momentum, companies like Hubspot and Profound built more tools for measuring how brands show up in LLMs. 
• McAfee and Lenovo released a new tool that lets people detect audio deepfakes using their laptop, which included a new platform to help educate people about AI scams.

September

At the 2024 Meta Connect developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives debuted a number of new products and features to power the giant platform’s vision for AI, mixed reality and online content. Along with releasing its Llama 3.2 model for images and text, Meta also previewed new AI voices for Meta AI including celebrity voice collaborations with John Lena, Kristen Bell and Keegan-Michael Key. The company also debuted an upgraded version of its AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses.

• AI came up during Google’s September antitrust trial in relation to how Google’s scale gives it major advantages with machine learning and generative AI.
• A year after NotebookLM debuted, the Google product went viral after debuting a way to create AI-generated audio summaries that resembled podcasts.
• The FTC announced legal actions against five companies as part of a wider crackdown on companies’ deceptive marketing and claims about AI products and services.
• Spotify rolled out a new AI playlist generator powered by LLMs, while McAfee debuted a new feature to help detect AI deepfakes.

October

More AI-powered ad tools arrived for marketers across various platforms. Pinterest debuted new AI tools for advertisers to create ad creative and automate media buying through its recently unveiled Pinterest Performance+ platform, with one new tool for turning blank backgrounds into “lifestyle imagery” to enhance a brand’s products. Microsoft debuted new ad tools for Copilot, Bing and Edge; Google expanded ads for its AI Overviews search summaries; Meta debuted a new AI video tool; and Reddit rolled out more AI tools for contextual targeting and keyword suggestion. Finally, TikTok announced its Smart+ platform to help with automating creative, ad targeting, ad-buying and optimization. 

• Walmart announced new retail-specific AI model called Wallaby to help create “adaptive retail” tools for employees, personalized shopping, customer service and employees.
• NewsCorp sued Perplexity, alleging the AI search startup violated copyright and trademark laws by misusing content from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.
• Adobe debuted a new free Content Authenticity app for creators to add content credentials to protect their IP and block companies from training their AI models on work without permission.
• Trainspot, a startup co-founded by the former chief product officer of Brave, launched a new AI data marketplace to help developers source licensed training data for AI models.
• Former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji became a whistleblower by claiming the company broke copyright laws. A month later, Balaji died in what officials declared was a suicide just days after he and others were named as potential witnesses in The New York Times’ legal battle against OpenAI.

November

Perplexity made headlines with its much anticipated debut of ads for its AI search plaform, with early advertisers like Whole Foods and Indeed. The firm also added a new AI shopping assistant, which brought new opportunities and challenges for the evolution of e-commerce in the AI era. 

• Ahead of the U.S. election, concerns grew over AI-generated political misinformation, including paid content, algorithmic bias, and foreign interference. However, some researchers argued its impact may have been less severe than anticipated.
• Legal filings showed Google subpoenaed three of its biggest AI rivals — OpenAI, Perplexity AI, and Microsoft — as part of the discovery process in the search antitrust trial. The same month, the DOJ served OpenAI a separate subpoena.
• Google debuted a dedicated mobile iPhone app for Gemini to let people text and talk with the chatbot, create AI-generated images, and access other Google apps. 
• Coca-Cola created an AI-generated holiday ad for its 2024 holiday campaign in the U.K.
• Estee Lauder and OpenAI announced its “GPT Lab” partnership had already led to the creation of 240 custom GPTs that help employees analyze consumer surveys, develop new products, and market existing categories.
• Cognitiv and Index Exchange became the latest partners to add ways to integrate generative AI and deep learning into SSPs  for contextual ad-targeting.

December

Major AI players unwrapped big updates ahead of the holidays including much-awaited AI video tools. OpenAI officially released Sora text-to-video platform, Google released Veo, Amazon debuted a new suite of Nova models (with one for studio-quality AI videos), and Runway ML rolled out more updates. The updates followed TikTok expanding access to its Symphony Creative Studio, which lets advertisers create AI-generated videos. Samsung also announced a new XR headset and a collaboration with Google to make AI-generated content.

• Google debuted a range of new features as part of its release of Gemini 2.0, including a preview of a new agent called Project Mariner to help people use bots to autonomously browse and shop online.
• Apple released iOS 18.2 with new Apple Intelligence features along with ChatGPT integrations for Siri and Writing Tools.
• Omnicom and IPG’s plans to merge had some wondering what the combined holding company might mean for bigger AI investments.
• Reddit announced a new way to generate answers powered by generative AI.

Looking ahead to 2025, it’s hard not to imagine next year’s timeline being even longer, given how rapidly AI — generative and otherwise — is being embedded into every corner of the marketing and media landscape.