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| Andy Tannen |
Is it possible to find a national media outlet that doesn’t feature at least one article about how generative AI is changing an industry, company work processes, or all of humanity?
Even if you read a specific trade publication you will find gen AI coverage: I’ve reviewed trades ranging from HR Brew to Mass Transit, Processing magazine (covers industrial processes), Publishers Weekly, Variety and Waste Management World—each is writing about industry companies racing to adapt ChatGPT, Copilot or a competitor chatbot.
I wondered how much of this tsunami of coverage was due to the hype driven by OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and other gen AI leaders. So I consulted one of the tech industry’s most reliable hype experts, Gartner Inc., which originated its Hype Cycle analysis back in 1995 and still deploys the tool. In August 2024 Gartner published its Hype Cycle for 2024 Emerging Technologies, including generative AI.
In a press release, Gartner noted that “Gen AI is over the Peak of Inflated Expectations, as business focus continues to shift from excitement around foundation models to use cases that drive ROI.” Gartner defines Peak of Inflated Expectations as: “Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.”
It is possible that gen AI will move into the next Hype Cycle category, which is the Trough of Disillusionment: “Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.”
Other IT industry leaders have recently commented on the hype surrounding gen AI. Andrew Ng, a pioneer in machine learning and AI (and co-founder of Coursera), was quoted by the fastforward tech newsletter, saying the following at an April AI conference where he was a speaker: “There's a certain set of views that have been disproportionately amplified, such as how technology is so dangerous you could wipe out humanity, which I don't think is true, but it makes them look more powerful.” He added: “The PR hype is disconnected from the business reality of progress. We frankly need to ignore most of the hype and just keep doing the work that creates value.”
So how much of the coverage about gen AI is hype as opposed to truly accurate reporting? That question becomes moot when you consider how much capital is being invested to develop gen AI and its infrastructure as companies expand product offerings via AI agents and other new capabilities. Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet alone are expected by Wall Street to invest up to $340 billion (combined) in capital spending this year, much of that tied to AI investment (chips, software, building data centers, acquiring energy to run the centers). McKinsey recently projected that by 2030, data centers will require $6.7 trillion worldwide to keep pace with the demand for compute power.
Rarely in history has there been a technology/economic trend with this much impact across society. “Hype” inevitably has to be part of it. As Bill Gates said shortly after ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, “AI is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet.”
Some PR jobs will surely be lost to gen AI chatbots, since chatbots can write pretty well (and create first-draft strategy plans, media lists, etc.), but far more jobs will be created to promote and differentiate the technology’s many products and benefits for nearly every industry. That can’t be bad for the PR industry.
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Andy Tannen is president of Tannen Corporate Communications, a corporate reputation consultancy. Previously, he worked in corporate communications at Publicis Groupe's MSL for 28 years, with clients such as IBM, United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, AstraZeneca, Roche, Honeywell, BP and many other companies.
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