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(Bloomberg) — The rise of ChatGPT sparked fears about artificial intelligence roiling businesses of all kinds. Two years after the chatbot’s release, the results haven’t been nearly as cataclysmic as some investors predicted. But there’s still plenty of anxiety.
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Earlier this month, Adobe Inc. shares plunged after giving a disappointing revenue forecast. The report rekindled worries that despite developing its own AI tools, the company is still at risk of losing business to startups like OpenAI and Runway AI. Shares of the maker of photo and video-editing software are now on pace for the worst month in over two years.
Adobe is the latest cautionary tale for investors even though the jury is still out on whether AI will prove to be a boon or bust for its business and others like it. For all of the angst, a view of the clear winners and losers remains murky.
“It is too soon to say whether a company can adapt to AI or be roadkill,” said Gil Luria, the head of technology research at D.A. Davidson. AI is the most disruptive technology since the internet, but its impact on the market will take more than 24 months to play out, Luria added.
Some companies that investors thought would be at-risk have thrived. Take Duolingo Inc., the maker of language-learning software. Its shares have rallied more than 50% this year despite facing stiffer competition from AI startups. The company’s embrace of AI has helped lower costs and its expansion into other subjects such as math and music is attracting new customers.
Internet services companies like GoDaddy Inc. and Wix.com Ltd, which were labeled as potential AI losers, have also seen their shares soar. GoDaddy is up 93% while Wix.com has gained 80%. Pearson, another education-company that was seen as being in ChatGPT’s crosshairs early on, saw its shares hit the highest level since 2015 this month.
There are, of course, plenty of other companies that haven’t done as well. A Goldman Sachs basket of stocks believed to face heightened risks from AI has gained 21% since the end of 2022, compared with a 55% gain for the S&P 500 Index.
The dislocation between expectations around AI and how things have actually panned out underscores the uncertainty around the technology and the difficulty in predicting how it will shape markets and the economy. While tech giants like Microsoft Corp. continue to spend heavily on AI, the services still aren’t being widely used and it has taken longer than many expected to generate comparable AI-related revenue.
