During last week’s chatbot hype, with Microsoft and Google attempting to outduel each other in showcasing early versions of artificial intelligence-powered search, more than 1 million people signed up to try Microsoft’s tool in the first 48 hours, the company said.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC that the technology, which can spit out complete answers that read like they were written by a human, was “perhaps the industrial revolution brought to knowledge work.”
But for those concerned about accuracy, the AI leaves plenty to be desired.
In Microsoft’s demo in front of reporters, the ChatGPT-like technology embedded in the company’s Bing search engine analyzed earnings reports from Gap and Lululemon. In comparing its answers to the actual reports, the chatbot missed some numbers. Others appear to have been made up.
“Bing AI got some answers completely wrong during their demo. But no one noticed,” wrote independent search researcher Dmitri Brereton in a Substack post on Monday. “Instead, everyone jumped on the Bing hype train.”
Brereton identified possible factual issues in the Microsoft demo in its responses about vacuum cleaner specifications and travel plans to Mexico in addition to the financial errors. He told CNBC he wasn’t initially looking for errors, and only discovered them when he looked more closely to write a comparison of the AI unveilings from Microsoft and Google.
AI experts call the phenomenon “hallucination,” or the propensity of tools based on large language models to simply make stuff up. Last week, Google introduced a competing AI tool that also included factual errors — although the mistakes were quickly called out by viewers.
Both companies are rushing to incorporate new kinds of generative AI into search engines and are eager to show their advancements following the explosion of ChatGPT, which OpenAI introduced to the public in November. OpenAI has raised billions from Microsoft, while competing startups like Stability AI and Hugging Face also have ballooned to billion-dollar valuations in private funding rounds.
While Google has been reluctant to add AI-generated responses into search engines, citing reputational risk and safety concerns, Microsoft, in its announcement last week, stressed the short-term potential of releasing the technology to some of the public.
“I think it’s important not to be in a lab,” Nadella said. “You have to get these things out safely.”
When it came time to demo Bing AI’s response to a query on corporate earnings, there were some problems.
Yusuf Mehdi, a marketing executive at Microsoft, navigated to Gap’s investor relations site, and asked the Bing AI to summarize the “key takeaways” from the retailer’s third-quarter earnings release in November.
“Very cool. A massive time savings,” Mehdi said.
These are screen shots from Microsoft’s demo:
Kif Leswing/CNBC
Kif Leswing/CNBC
Here are some mistakes in the summary:
Gap’s reported gross margin was 37.4%. But after excluding charges related to Yeezy, the adjusted gross margin was 38.7%.
Gap operating margin was 4.6%, not 5.9%, a number that can’t be found in the company’s report.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.71 adjusted, instead of $0.42, a number that’s not in the report. The figure Gap reported included an adjusted income tax benefit of about $0.33.
Gap pulled its full-year outlook in August and said in the third-quarter report that “net sales could be down mid-single digits year-over-year in the fourth quarter.” That would imply a decline in revenue for the full year as opposed to “growth in the low double digits.” There is no forecast for operating margin or EPS.
Microsoft said it knows about the errors and that it expects Bing AI to make mistakes.
“We’re aware of this report and have analyzed its findings in our efforts to improve this experience,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC. “We recognize that there is still work to be done and are expecting that the system may make mistakes during this preview period, which is why the feedback is critical so we can learn and help the models get better.”
Microsoft then asked Bing AI to compare Gap’s earnings with Lululemon’s report. Mehdi wanted Bing to pull the information from the two reports into a table.
“Look how amazing this is,” he said. “Just like that, in one table, I can get an answer to this question. Think how much time that would’ve taken otherwise.”
Here’s what the Bing AI tool returned:
Kif Leswing/CNBC
Kif Leswing/CNBC
There are several errors in the table, starting with margins.
Lululemon’s gross margin was 55.9%, not 58.7%.
The company’s operating margin was 19%, not 20.7%.
Lululemon reported diluted EPS of $2, and adjusted EPS of $1.62. Bing showed a diluted EPS number of $1.65.
Gap had $679 million in cash and cash equivalents, not $1.4 billion.
Gap had $3.04 billion in inventory, not $1.9 billion.
Business representatives staff a table at a career fair in Harlem hosted by Assemblymember Jordan Wright on Dec. 10, 2025, in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
The U.S. November jobs report has something for everybody.
Those convinced of weakness will highlight the higher-than-expected unemployment rate as well as the number of jobs shrinking in October.
On the other hand, proponents of a strong economy will focus on jobs growth in November beating estimates, and point out that the increase in the unemployment rate was mostly because the labor force grew, as CNBC’s Jeff Cox noted.
Without any definitive judgment that can be made on the state of the labor market, traders left their bets on interest rate cuts in January mostly unchanged. It’s currently at 25.5%, around one percentage point higher than before the release of the November jobs report, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
“Today’s data paints a picture of an economy catching its breath,” said Gina Bolvin, president at Bolvin Wealth Management Group. “Job growth is holding on, but cracks are forming. Consumers are still standing, but not sprinting.”
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.
The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. The Information first reported on the potential deal.
The discussions come after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and formally outlined the details of its partnership with Microsoft, giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with companies across the broader AI ecosystem.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, but it no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider, according to an October release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.
Amazon has invested at least $8 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the booming generative AI market. Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in the startup.
Amazon Web Services has been designing its own AI chips since around 2015, and the hardware has become crucial for AI companies that are trying to train models and meet growing demand for compute. AWS announced its Inferentia chips in 2018, and the latest generation of its Trainium chips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Last month, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS, its first contract with the leader in cloud infrastructure leader.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
Shares of Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared about 700% in their market debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, after the company raised nearly $600 million in its initial public offering.
Shares, which were priced at 104.66 yuan in the IPO, surged to over 835 yuan on debut, marking a 697% jump.
Similar to Moore Threads, which saw a robust debut at the start of the month, MetaX develops graphics processing units for artificial intelligence applications, tapping into a fast-growing sector driven by rising adoption of AI services.
MetaX is part of a growing cohort of local chipmakers building AI processors, reflecting Beijing’s push to reduce dependence on U.S. chips following Washington’s tech curbs on export of high-end technology to China.
Washington has imposed export curbs on U.S. chip behemoth Nvidia, barring sales of its most advanced AI chips to China.
Newer Chinese players such as Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the AI space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in graphics processing unit, or GPU, demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.
Earlier this month, shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based GPU manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.
Macquarie’s equity analyst Eugene Hsiao said investor enthusiasm around Chinese AI-chip IPOs such as MetaX is partly shaped by longer-term expectations that China will build a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem as tensions with the U.S. persist.
“For that to work, you need these players. You need names like Moore Threads, Meta X, etc,” he said.
“So I think when investors are looking at these IPOs, they implicitly are thinking about the nationalistic element,” Hsiao noted, adding that the main driver of the frenzy, however, was the firms’ growth potential.