AI’s Precarious Position: Approaching the Disillusionment Cliff

VentureBeat presents: AI Unleashed – An exclusive executive event for enterprise data leaders. Network and learn with industry peers. Learn More

This will be an unpopular take: I believe AI is teetering on the edge of a disillusionment cliff. Whether that goes beyond Gartner’s famous “trough,” and whether it lasts, remains to be seen. But something is shifting — and it’s not just the slight early-autumn chill in the air.

I know what you’re thinking. How could that be? After all, AI is booming. The past couple of weeks in AI news have been two of the most exciting, exhilarating and jam-packed since I began covering the space for VentureBeat in April 2022.

Just last week, I sat in a press-filled audience at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters watching Mark Zuckerberg tout Meta’s new AI chatbot and image generator, integrated with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The week before, I was in Washington DC as Amazon announced the new generative AI-powered Alexa, and in New York City when Microsoft announced it would integrate its Copilot into Windows 11 — including OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, which was announced the same week.

But hear me out: Along with the fast pace of compelling, even jaw-dropping AI developments, AI also faces a laundry list of complex challenges. Hot startups like Jasper are cutting their internal valuations. Big Tech AI is facing multiple lawsuits around copyright issues. Hollywood unions have pushed back on generative AI. Deepfakes are proliferating to the point that even Tom Hanks was forced to post a warning about a dental ad using an AI-generated deepfake of his likeness. Many Americans believe AI will negatively impact the 2024 elections.