Companies bet on Wall Street’s bet on AI

The Future. It seems like every tech and media company is jumping on the AI bandwagon to appease Wall Street. While some of the integrations are novel and show promise, others are a bit gimmicky or dangerously unready for primetime. Moving fast without due diligence to how it will affect the company, the industry at large, or customers can often lead to a lot of heartbreak and backtracking. AI may be the future… but it maybe shouldn’t be everyone’s future.

Media meets the moment
Companies are pivoting hard to AI.

• Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel used AI firm Speechify (which Endeavor has invested in) to generate the opening remarks of the company’s last earnings call.
• CAA, through its Connect Ventures, was behind a recent fundraise into Deep Voodoo — a deepfake firm founded by South Park creators Matt Stone & Trey Parker.
• Spotify has unleashed its AI-powered “DJ” on listeners to help curate personalized radio shows.
• Snap debuted a ChatGPT-powered chatbot called “My AI” for Snapchat+ users… which is already causing a lot of controversy over how it talks to teens.
• BuzzFeed is using AI to write content and create personalized quizzes (yes, BuzzFeed quizzes are getting new life), which led to its stock price doubling.

Future financed
AI may have a lot of kinks, but it’s the flavor of the month for Wall Street, with Morgan Stanley calling it a “$6 trillion opportunity” and Bank of America declaring that the tech is  “at a defining moment — like the internet in the ’90s.” So stock-price-obsessed companies feel they have no choice but to rush to integrate AI or get caught up in the narrative that they’re behind the times.

But some in Wall Street seem wary of jumping headfirst into AI after realizing they were a little too blinded by past innovations like streaming, crypto, and the metaverse. Goldman Sachs analysts Eric Sheridan and Kash Rangan warned that it might be just another “hype” cycle.