AI, chatbots, and augmented reality lead the top tech trends of the week

In week two of the ZDNET Innovation Index, artificial intelligence and especially generative AI are leading the list, again. That’s clearly not going to shock you and we should certainly expect that trend to continue since there’s more news, interest, and investment in AI than any other topic in tech right now. 

If you’re not familiar with last week’s launch, the Innovation Index highlights the top trends in tech based on a vote from our panel of journalists and analysts. We’re especially looking for the developments that are the most innovative and will have the biggest impact on the future. ZDNET’s editorial leaders narrow down the top 10 trends of the week and then our panel votes to rank the top four.

This week’s leading trends were:

1. Microsoft Copilot now lets you create your own custom chatbots
2. EnCharge AI breakthrough could solve generative AI’s power problem
3. Meta Ray-Ban smartglasses can now identify landmarks
4. AWS launches tool to validate the helpfulness of AI models

Our panel unequivocally selected Microsoft Copilot rolling out custom chatbots as the top story of the week. Copilot Pro users can now use personalized instructions to make their own conversational bots and can even choose to share them with others or keep them private. Of course, one of the biggest challenges with all of today’s generative AI chatbots is that they consume an incredible amount of energy. Startup EnCharge AI has a potential breakthrough that could run AI models on lower powered chips using in-memory compute (IMC) and bringing genAI to edge computing.

The only non-AI development on the list this week was Meta Ray-Ban smartglasses rolling out a new augmented reality feature where the glasses can use their cameras to identify local landmarks. Of course, they use AI to do that so maybe it’s not such a non-AI story. 

Lastly, Amazon’s AWS team launched a new tool to help business sort through the tidal wave of new generative AI tools by validating the helpfulness of genAI models based on standards that the AWS team is developing.

That’s it for this week. Check back next week for the latest set of trends.