A Look Back at AI in 2024: The Year of Agents and Multimodality

If 2023 was the year the world was introduced to the power of Large Language Models, 2024 was the year AI started to become a true collaborator. The focus shifted from simple chat-based interactions to more complex, autonomous, and multimodal systems. As we close out the year, let's look back at the key trends that defined the AI landscape in 2024.

1. The Rise of Autonomous AI Agents

The most significant conceptual leap in 2024 was the maturation of AI agents. Instead of just responding to prompts, these systems could take on high-level goals, break them down into steps, and execute those steps to completion. We saw this manifest in several ways:

• AI-Powered Software Development: Tools like Windsurf's "Flow Mode" and the continued evolution of Cursor demonstrated a new paradigm where developers could assign tasks like "add a new API endpoint" and have the AI agent handle changes across multiple files, which the developer would then review.
• Web Automation: Agents became capable of browsing the web, filling out forms, and performing complex tasks, moving beyond simple information retrieval.
• Personal Assistants: The next generation of personal assistants started to emerge, capable of managing calendars, booking appointments, and performing multi-step actions on behalf of the user.

This trend marked a shift from using AI as a tool for assistance to using it as a tool for delegation.

2. Multimodality Became Mainstream

In 2024, the lines between text, image, and audio AI blurred completely. Models that can seamlessly process and generate multiple types of data became the standard, not the exception.

• Text-to-Video: OpenAI's Sora, released early in the year, stunned the world with its ability to generate high-fidelity, coherent video clips from simple text prompts, opening up new frontiers for creative content generation.
• Integrated Vision: Models like Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro demonstrated powerful capabilities in understanding and reasoning about long video contexts, allowing users to ask detailed questions about video content.
• Real-time Voice and Vision: AI assistants on smart devices and glasses began to process real-time audio and visual input, allowing for more natural and context-aware interactions with the physical world.

3. Open Source Models Closed the Gap

While proprietary models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic continued to push the state of the art, 2024 saw an explosion in the capability of open-source models.

• Meta's Llama 3 set a new standard for open models, with performance that was competitive with closed-source giants like GPT-4.
• Mistral AI continued to release a series of powerful and efficient models that could be run on consumer hardware, democratizing access to cutting-edge AI.

This trend empowered developers and researchers to build on top of powerful base models without being locked into a specific vendor's ecosystem, fostering a massive wave of innovation.

4. AI Integrated into the OS and Hardware

The battle for AI dominance moved to the device level. Major tech companies began deeply integrating AI features into their operating systems and hardware.

• On-Device LLMs: Smartphones and laptops started shipping with specialized hardware (NPUs) designed to run smaller, efficient language models directly on the device. This enabled faster, more private AI features that didn't require a cloud connection.
• Smarter Operating Systems: Features like AI-powered search, summarization, and settings management became standard in both mobile and desktop operating systems.

What to Expect in 2025

As we look ahead, the trends of 2024 are set to accelerate. We can expect AI agents to become more capable and reliable, moving from performing well-defined tasks to handling more ambiguous, long-term goals. The integration of AI into our daily software and hardware will become even deeper and more seamless. 2024 was the year AI learned to do more than just talk; it learned to do, and the consequences of that shift are only just beginning to unfold.