Is that company powered by proprietary AI insights and solutions or did it just spend some time futzing around with ChatGPT?

Sorting out the reality behind vague buzzwords has become a key skill in the era of generative AI hype, in which a sense of FOMO has pressured startups and big corporations alike to perhaps overstate their AI capabilities. But on top of losing trust with consumers or investors if these claims don’t pan out, such inflated language—dubbed “AI washing”—can come with legal risks.

Even as Wall Street investors worry about an AI bubble, businesses are still gunning to show off AI bona fides. Startups centered on AI may be more likely to nab funding, and S&P 500 companies that mention AI in earnings calls, which reached an all-time high in 2023, tend to see better stock performance on average.

'New-school' fraud: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun to crack down on companies that make false claims about AI in recent months following a series of warnings to publicly traded companies from Chair Gary Gensler. In June, for instance, the commission charged the CEO and founder of a now-shuttered recruitment platform called Joonko in “an old-school fraud using new-school buzzwords like ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘automation,’” as Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said in a statement.

“As more and more people seek out AI-related investment opportunities, we will continue to police the markets against AI washing,” Grewal added. “It is critical for investors to beware of companies exploiting the fanfare around artificial intelligence to raise funds.”

Keep reading here.—PK

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North American primary markets added the equivalent of an entire Silicon Valley’s worth of data capacity in the first six months of 2024 alone, per the H1 2024 edition of real-estate services company CBRE’s data center trends report.

Across North America’s eight primary markets, according to the report, 515 megawatts (MW) of new capacity became available during that time—outstripping the total capacity of Silicon Valley, which stands at 459 MW.

In the middle of 2024, the US had just shy of 5,700 MW of total capacity, CBRE estimated. That’s a 10% increase over six months alone. Year over year, primary market supply rose by around 1,100 MW, or 24%.

Companies are continuing to secure additional data center capacity even in the face of power and equipment shortages that have hampered expansion, business news site Sherwood reported, as well as renewing leases even when their existing facilities are less than ideal.

“We’re signing leases that some of these clients won’t occupy for three or four years,” Executive Managing Director and Global Head of CBRE Data Center Solutions Pat Lynch told Sherwood. “They have no other choice. It just shows that their capacity need is not going anywhere, and they just want to get in on it.”

Keep reading on IT Brew.—TM

Many companies are exploring generative AI, but it’s still early days for the technology, which only became widely known in November 2022. Generative AI shows great promise, but will the hype translate to ROI?

For Walmart, it already has. During its last earnings call, the giant retailer reported 4.8% revenue growth, bolstered by 21% growth in its e-commerce function. Walmart executives credited e-commerce growth to several factors, including improvements in deliveries, but one stood out: generative AI.

Walmart was able to roll out these AI tools relatively quickly because of its prior investments in technology, Anshu Bhardwaj, SVP and COO of Walmart Global Technology and Walmart Commerce Technologies, told CFO Brew.

For the past several years, Walmart has focused on “platformizing” its technology, she said, bringing it onto its machine learning platform, called Element. The platform provides a “base level of capabilities and functionality” with governance, compliance, security, and ethical safeguards built in, Bhardwaj said.

Keep reading here.—CV

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