Big tech companies seem to be obsessed with artificial intelligence (AI). Recently, CEOs of tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Google have mentioned AI dozens of times in their earnings calls—five times more than normal.
ChatGPT: AI-obsessed Big Tech, mentioned up to five times more than the previous quarter
A Reuters review of the tech giants' earnings meeting minutes showed executives mentioned "AI," "Generative AI (AIGC)" or "machine learning" up to five times more often than in the previous quarter.
The number of times Google's parent company Alphabet mentioned AI in its earnings call rose to 45 from 13 at the end of the third quarter on Thursday, surpassing Microsoft, which mentioned 39 times, up from 15 of the previous quarter.
Recall that AI startup OpenAI launched a ChatGPT chatbot in November , sparking a race to integrate AI into more products and allowing investors to place bets on which company will come out on top. Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, efforts to make ChatGPT widely available to its cloud customers, and other initiatives pose new challenges for Alphabet.
The incorporation of ChatGPT into Microsoft's Bing search engine could give the company an edge over Google Search, which has long dominated information searches, industry observers said.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said Google will stay in the game, perhaps a nod to the public's obsession with ChatGPT. “We will undertake this work with courage and a strong sense of responsibility,” he said.
Pichai also added that AI software will be a focus at Alphabet, which plans to publicly launch its own chatbot software, LaMDA, in the coming weeks.
Edward Jones analyst David Heger said Google is becoming more open about its massive investments in AI after remaining silent. “Google has been more vocal that this will benefit nearly all of their businesses, and they expect AI to be further integrated into other businesses in the future,” he said.
Evan Spiegel, CEO of social media company Snapchat, said on his fourth-quarter earnings call that AIGC will be key to the development of augmented reality (AR) over the next five years, which in turn will be key.
Spiegel said the technology is currently limited because artists have to build 3D models, but AIGC could speed up the process. He added: “Imagine your child is playing with AR glasses and suddenly shouts, 'Oh my God, there's a pirate ship and a big monster.' We can bring these things to life with AIGC technology, I think that's really exciting."
Mark Zuckerberg also called AIGC "an extremely exciting new field" in the company's earnings call, during which he mentioned AI as many as 30 times, compared to the previous quarter's total. 22 times. Zuckerberg also said users can expect the company to "throw a bunch of different things" into the AIGC space this year.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta plans to apply this new technology to almost all of its products, such as the generation of images, videos, avatars and 3D assets. Furthermore, AIGC software will also help content creators to create more content within Meta applications. Marketers can use AIGC to help them write copy for paid posts or create images and videos, Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president of Meta's global business group, said in an interview.
“One of my goals for Meta is to be a leader in the AIGC field based on our research,” Zuckerberg said.
Even at Apple, where hardware like the iPhone dominates, artificial intelligence is seen as an important part of the future. When asked by analysts about Apple's AI strategy, CEO Tim Cook said Apple is using the technology to power features like automotive collision detection on iPhone and Apple Watch, saying the technology will be applied to all Apple products and services. .
Cook said, “We see huge potential in this area to impact almost everything we do. AI is obviously a horizontal technology, not a vertical technology. Therefore, it will affect each of our products and each service."
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