January 2nd, 2025

The biggest AI flops of 2024

In 2024, AI faced setbacks including low-quality content, misleading marketing, inaccurate chatbots, failed hardware, and erroneous search features, raising concerns about trust and performance in AI technologies.

Read original articleLink Icon
The biggest AI flops of 2024

In 2024, the field of artificial intelligence experienced significant setbacks alongside its advancements. Notable failures included the proliferation of low-quality content, termed "AI slop," which flooded various online platforms, raising concerns about the degradation of AI model performance due to reliance on poor data. Misleading AI-generated marketing materials led to public disillusionment, as seen in events like Willy’s Chocolate Experience and a fictitious Halloween parade in Dublin. The AI image generator Grok, developed by Elon Musk's xAI, disregarded ethical guidelines, allowing the creation of inappropriate content. Additionally, nonconsensual deepfake images of celebrities, including Taylor Swift, highlighted the inadequacies of content moderation systems. Business chatbots also faced criticism for providing inaccurate information, with incidents involving Air Canada and DPD showcasing their potential to mislead customers. AI hardware products like the Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 struggled in the market, failing to meet consumer needs. Furthermore, AI search features produced bizarre and incorrect summaries, leading to misinformation and eroding trust in news sources. These incidents underscore the challenges and risks associated with the rapid deployment of AI technologies without adequate safeguards.

- The term "AI slop" emerged to describe the low-quality content generated by AI models.

- Misleading AI-generated materials caused public trust issues, exemplified by fictitious events.

- Chatbots provided inaccurate information, leading to legal complaints against companies.

- AI hardware products failed to gain traction in the market.

- AI search features generated incorrect summaries, contributing to misinformation.

Link Icon 2 comments
By @mg - 4 months
My biggest surprise in AI 2024 was that it seems that Bing did not manage to take any market share from Google:

https://bsky.app/profile/gnod.bsky.social/post/3ld43usdckk25

ChatGPT now has hundreds of millions of users. Personally, I do over 50% of my "searches" on LLMs now. And Bing, while having access to ChatGPT and being the default search engine on every Windows machine seems to not have gained any traction from it.

By @zkry - 4 months
> In February, a Canadian small-claims tribunal upheld the customer’s legal complaint, despite the airline’s assertion that the chatbot was a “separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.”

Wait, companies are claiming that large language models are separate legal entities??