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Google launched Bard AI, it’s own chatbot to rival Microsoft and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

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Tech investors are eager to hear how much industry leaders are bolstering profitability now that they’re in cost-cutting mode.

But there’s one area where they also want to see hefty investments: artificial intelligence.

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Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta all reported quarterly results this week, updating Wall Street on their efforts to improve efficiency as economic concerns mount. When it comes to AI and the latest boom in so-called large language models (LLMs) that power products like ChatGPT, the mega-cap tech companies can’t afford to get left behind.

Generative AI programs use increasing amounts of data and processing power to produce outputs that seem like they were made by a human — a block of text, a snippet of code, or a computer-generated image. They require specialized supercomputers that aren’t cheap.

On their earnings calls this week, tech CEOs talked at length about the potential for AI, whether they’re building their own models or rapidly integrating it into products. The common theme was their emphasis on the large sums of money they’ll be spending to build and run these applications.

Here’s what executives from Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta told analysts:

Alphabet

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc.

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Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, is under intense pressure to deliver AI products due to the perceived threat that the company’s core Google search engine faces from the sophisticated chatbots hitting the market. The company recently declared an internal “code red.”

Pichai said on Tuesday’s earnings call that the company was making “good progress” towards its AI goals.

“We’ll continue to incorporate generative AI advances to make search better in a thoughtful and deliberate way,” Pichai said.

He said Google is using AI to improve the conversion rate of ads and reduce the amount of “toxic text” that goes into AI models. The company is also combining two primary AI teams, Brain and DeepMind.

Pichai said that in addition to using its own homegrown chips to power its models, it’s using processors from Nvidia, which makes the vast majority of graphics chips used to train and deploy cutting-edge AI.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during an interview in Redmond, Washington, on March 15, 2023.

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Microsoft is using OpenAI’s GPT technology in its Bing search engine, Office, and Teams teleconferencing system.

CEO Satya Nadella says that AI will eventually drive revenue growth and is already sparking increased uptake in the company’s apps. Bing, for example, has seen downloads quadruple since Microsoft added a chatbot, he said. Microsoft has generated over 200 million images through its Bing integration.

Nadella warned that a significant amount of capital will be required to build out the massive datacenters needed to run AI applications.

“We will continue to invest in our cloud infrastructure, particularly AI-related spend, as we scale to the growing demand driven by customer transformation,” Nadella said. “And we expect the resulting revenue to grow over time.”

Amazon

Andy Jassy on stage at the 2022 New York Times DealBook on November 30, 2022 in New York City.

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Meta

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, in July 2021.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to dispel the notion that his company is no longer focused on the metaverse after turning his attention in that direction in late 2021.

But he wanted investors to know that Meta can invest in metaverse technologies while simultaneously putting tons of resources into AI, which he called a “key theme” for his company.

Zuckerberg said that while the company has used machine learning to deliver recommendations and power products like Facebook’s news feed or ad systems, a new main area of focus is generative foundation models.

“It’s been a pretty amazing year of progress on this front, and the work happening now is going to impact every single one of our apps and services,” Zuckerberg said.

He said the company would work on a variety of products using the technology, including chat experiences in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, tools for making images for posts on Facebook and Instagram, and eventually programs that could spit out entire videos from short descriptions.

A concept he’s particularly excited about is “AI agents,” which often refer to AI programs that can carry out goals.

“There’s an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful,” Zuckerberg said. One possibility for an AI agent would be to handle customer service for businesses, Meta has said.

Zuckerberg discussed the company’s big investments to build out its datacenters for AI applications. He said the technology was the “main driver” of Meta’s growth in capital expenditures over the past few years.

“At this point we are no longer behind in building out our AI infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said.

That doesn’t mean Meta is done buying graphics processors. Zuckerberg said the company would need to “continue investing,” but would do so after it launches its generative AI products and gets a better grasp on the resources required.

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Michael Dell says ‘at some point there’ll be too many’ AI data centers, but not yet

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Michael Dell says 'at some point there'll be too many' AI data centers, but not yet

Dell CEO Michael Dell: AI demand is very solid

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said Tuesday that while demand for computing power is “tremendous,” the production of artificial intelligence data centers will eventually top out.

“I’m sure at some point there’ll be too many of these things built, but we don’t see any signs of that,” Dell said on “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

The hardware maker’s server networking business grew 58% last year and was up 69% last quarter, Dell said. As large language models have evolved to more multimodal and multi-agent systems, the demand for AI processing power and capacity has continued to be strong.

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Dell’s AI servers are powered by Nvidia‘s Blackwell Ultra chips. The company then sells its devices to customers like cloud service provider CoreWeave and xAI, Elon Musk’s startup.

Dell shares rose over 3% Tuesday after increasing its expected long-term revenue and profit growth in an analyst meeting.

The computer maker raised its expected annual revenue growth to 7% to 9%, up from its previous target of 3% to 4%, with diluted earnings per share now expected to be 15% higher, up from its previous 8% target.

The company reported strong second-quarter earnings in August, and said it planned to ship $20 billion worth of AI servers in fiscal 2026. That is double what it sold last year.

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OpenAI’s Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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OpenAI's Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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The Motion Picture Association on Monday urged OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” against its new video creation model Sora 2, which is being used to produce content that it says is infringing on copyrighted media.

Following the Sora app’s rollout last week, users have been swarming the platform with AI-generated clips featuring characters from popular shows and brands.

“Since Sora 2’s release, videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service and across social media,” MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman clarified in a blog post that the company will give rightsholders “more granular control” over how their characters are used.

But Rivkin said that OpenAI “must acknowledge it remains their responsibility – not rightsholders’ – to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service,” and that “well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Concerns erupted immediately after Sora videos were created last week featuring everything from James Bond playing poker with Altman to body cam footage of cartoon character Mario evading the police.

Although OpenAI previously held an opt-out system, which placed the burden on studios to request that characters not appear on Sora, Altman’s follow-up blog post said the platform was changing to an opt-in model, suggesting that Sora would not allow the usage of copyrighted characters without permission.

However, Altman noted that the company may not be able to prevent all IP from being misused.

“There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn’t, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration,” Altman wrote.

Copyright concerns have emerged as a major issue during the generative AI boom.

Disney and Universal sued AI image creator Midjourney in June, alleging that the company used and distributed AI-generated characters from their films and disregarded requests to stop. Disney also sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Character.AI in September, warning the company to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says ‘valuations in AI are at a bubble’

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says 'valuations in AI are at a bubble'

Orlando Bravo: AI valuations are in a bubble

Thoma Bravo co-founder Orlando Bravo said that valuations for artificial intelligence companies are “at a bubble,” comparing it to the dotcom era.

But one key difference in the market now, he said, is that large companies with “healthy balance sheets” are financing AI businesses.

Bravo’s private equity firm boasts more than $181 billion in assets under management as of June, and focuses on buying and selling enterprise tech companies, with a significant chunk of its portfolio invested in cybersecurity.

Bravo told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday that investors can’t value a $50 million annual recurring revenue company at $10 billion.

“That company is going to have to produce a billion dollars in free cash flow to double an investor’s money, ultimately,” he said. “Even if the product is right, even if the market’s right, that’s a tall order, managerially.”

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OpenAI recently finalized a secondary share sale that would value the ChatGPT-maker at $500 billion. The company is projected to make $13 billion in revenue for 2025.

Nvidia recently said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, in part, to help the ChatGPT maker lease its chips and build out supercomputing facilities in the coming years.

Other public companies have soared on AI promises, with Palantir’s market cap climbing to $437 billion, putting it among the 20 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S., and AppLovin now worth $213 billion.

Even early-stage valuations are massive in AI, with Thinking Machines Lab notching a $12 billion valuation on a $2 billion seed round.

Despite the inflated numbers, Bravo emphasized that there’s a “big difference” between the dotcom collapse and the current landscape of AI.

“Now you have some really big companies and some big balance sheets and healthy balance sheets financing this activity, which is different than what happened roughly 25 years ago,” he said.

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