While it seems that it is increasingly possible to say this looking back at each and every twelve months, it was indeed quite a year for artificial intelligence. A truly transformative one, in fact.

How generative AI shaped 2023

At the end of last year, we recounted all the major achievements in large language models (LLMs) by the big technology vendors, and hailed the promise of a new application that would soon take over the imagination of the entire industry and much of the world, ChatGPT.

This engaging new chatbot proved a significant tipping point in the history of artificial intelligence technology to date, and ushered in the era of mainstream generative AI, driven by OpenAI with the support of Microsoft, as well as by other technology leaders, including Google, Meta and Amazon. Just two weeks ago, Google launched Gemini, a family of multimodal large language models with the capability to reason across different data types such as audio, images and text.

And generative AI offshoots based on these platforms appear each and every day.

Along with all of this development came the need for focused large volume data to support training of these new applications. This led to a wide range of procurement efforts, from scraping the web to utilizing user data, which in turn led to blocked bots, a copyright backlash and concerns over the use of consumers’ personal information.

The massive upswell in activity made the AI market an unparalleled brightspot in an otherwise underperforming economic landscape. New reports showcased hundreds of companies providing the content, code, design, data and other tools to innovate in this new category. 

AI startup investment boomed, and now the IPO market seems to be picking up pace as well. To power all of this, Nvidia joined the $1 trillion club as demand for its GPUs soared.

However, the speed of innovation in AI has also increased ethical concerns as to how these applications are being used, how they are being trained, and where humans fit in the process. Even Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of AI, has chimed in on his worries over the pace of change.


To monitor and manage all of these powerful technologies, new organizations were established for oversight. We at LXT are honored to join The Future of Artificial Intelligence Council alongside The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and participating members that include both large global organizations and promising young startups. I’m excited to represent LXT on this council and work with other industry leaders to help shape a better future of AI in Canada and beyond.

LXT highlights in 2023 

It has been a highly-productive year for us at LXT. 

We launched new Generative AI Services to ensure that our clients’ solutions are accurate, ethical and responsible in addition to commercially successful. We added two new executives to our stellar team to support our business growth – Chief Operations Officer Carolyn Harvey and Vice President of Technology Amr Nour-Eldin. Both bring extensive experience in their respective fields to LXT. 

This year, Carolyn redesigned our Operations division to improve our ability to deliver high-quality training data for our growing customer base and set us up for continued success in 2024. Amr developed a technology strategy for our data annotation platform that will enhance our annotation speed, accuracy and quality. I am thrilled to welcome these executives to our leadership team.

In addition, we welcomed new AI data experts to our team. You can learn more about their backgrounds and what they bring to LXT clients here. The LXT blog added valuable new perspectives on the broader AI market, including the new AI in the Real World Series and the Speaking of AI Podcast with Chief Growth Officer and industry veteran Phil Hall.

Finally, just as our previous Path to AI Maturity Report hinted at the coming generative AI boom with the prevalence of conversational AI (CAI) and natural language processing (NLP) solutions, we anticipate many new insights on the evolution of generative AI in the upcoming 2024 report.

Stay tuned for more along the way, and we wish you a healthy and prosperous 2024.