It’s been two years since the phrase “generative AI” began cluttering my email inbox. It wasn’t a new term (it appeared in one of Gartner's famous hype cycle reports back in 2020) but as the summer of 2022 came to a close, the inbound flow of messages and pitches I received were a clear sign that buzz was quickly building for AI-powered tools that could generate content–such as text, images and computer code. And when OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, generative AI catapulted into the mainstream culture and has been flying high ever since.
Something in that cheery narrative has changed during the past few weeks, however.
