Yep, launching things slowly and testing them before releasing wide. Seems like a good practice when you're introducing a new technology to the world.
For example for palm/bard this was my experience:
"Hey we have this amazing LLM!"
"Great, given you are a company can I pay you money above your costs for this service?"
"No but you can register for updates about when the wait-list will open"
They announced cool features for Google docs as well that I can't use.
Some of the things I've seen announced were maybe a year ago and still nothing. Just a wait-list or less.
Not everything gets launched because sometimes they find out in that testing period that they got it wrong.
Side smaller complaint - whats the point in these wait-lists if they never tell me when stuff actually launched.
I haven't seen otter or unicorn models, nor can I find tune them yet.
It comes in 4 sizes, I've only seen two so far
- Immersive mode in Maps (also AI, using NeRF) has only recently added just 5 cities,
- The screenshot-then-Multisearch Near Me is technically shipped, but it seems super-rough; I screenshot my keyboard and it suggested a specific brand of pasta across nearby supermarkets,
- I am still waitlisted for access to LaMDA through the AI test kitchen (and given this year’s I/O, things seem to take a different direction).
There is no question that ChatGPT’s release in particular went by a more successful playbook comparatively.
Just give me a price. Or let me bid on it.
Or, don't announce it like it's launched until it's usable.
Not really relevant then to their announced products is it?