100 Must-Read Generative AI Papers from 2024

A comprehensive list of some of the most impactful generative papers from last year

2024 has been such an exciting year for generative AI research. What really stands out to me is how much the focus has shifted. Just a few years ago, it felt like everything revolved around foundation models—bigger, better, more capable systems that could handle a variety of tasks. Back then, most of the work was very model-centric, with less attention on how these models could be applied in real-world scenarios.

But now, especially in 2023 and 2024, things are starting to look very different. With AI models already able to do so much, there’s more focus on application-level research too, and honestly, I love this change. These papers feel way more approachable. You don’t need to dive into crazy math or complex architectures to learn something useful, you can actually see how the research applies to solving real problems. It’s a good time to get involved in AI.

A Framework to Organize Research

To make sense of everything happening in 2024, I built a simple structure to categorize AI pape…