Billions of dollars are being poured into a new wave of AI technology. But will it pay off?

Leaders of tech companies Meta, Amazon and Google all reported quarterly financial results in in recent days The world's biggest technology companies - including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon - updated Wall Street this week on their finances. One common thread emerged: they are all planning to continue spending massive amounts of money on artificial intelligence (AI). The reaction from investors was that they need to see more tangible results to show for the $1tn (£743bn) and growing, external investment in things like computer chips, data centres, and even technical staff. That sent some tech stocks on a wild ride in recent days. While each company operates in different sectors, their AI spending and plans showed they have a few other things in common as well. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off the ongoing AI investment race, and every major tech company has since launched a consumer-facing AI chatbot of their own. Meta has Meta AI, Google has Gemini. Amazon has Rufus. Apple even relaunched Siri. Yet, none of the chatbots or the related tools in and of themselves clearly provide a meaningful amount of revenue for the companies, despite being costly to create. Instead, this batch of earnings results made clear that companies like Google, which is owned by Alphabet, and Meta are currently spending much more money related to AI tools than they bring in.