Tech CEOs wax poetic on AI, big adds to sales will take time

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Google-parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) talked up investments in artificial intelligence (AI) for the second quarter in a row but their results on Tuesday suggested that any substantial additions to sales will be slow.

The tech behemoths have launched an array of products that they promise are packed with generative AI, which creates brand new content – text, image, code – from past data. The term became a buzzword after Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that writes human-like responses.

“The world’s most advanced AI models are coming together with the world’s most universal user interface – natural language – to create a new era of computing,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive officer, said in a statement on Tuesday.

With quarterly reporting season just under way, the term “AI” has been used nearly twice as frequently in the conference calls of S&P 500 (.SPX) companies as it was in the previous quarter, a Reuters analysis showed.

Google used the term 52 times on its first-quarter call on Tuesday, up from 45 in the fourth quarter. Microsoft said it 36 times, versus 20 – not including references to its partner OpenAI.

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