Mentions of AI on earnings calls Q2 2024

Sherwood News

Companies are talking about AI considerably less than before

Have we passed peak AI?

8/29/24 8:48AM

The first quarter of this year was a record for big companies mentioning AI or artificial intelligence on their earnings calls. The second? It appears to have declined or at least plateaued (while the vast majority of companies have reported Q2 earnings, there may be a few stragglers, so we’ll see).

The decline is even more apparent for companies of all sizes, where mentions of AI peaked in Q4 2023, according to a survey of FactSet CallStreet earnings transcripts.

To be clear, companies are still talking about AI a lot, but just not at the fever pitch they had been.

There are a few possible reasons. Perhaps we’ve passed the peak of interest in AI. The popular imagination seems to have moved on as well, as evidenced by a decline in Google searches for AI. Or it simply isn’t the new buzzword anymore and AI has become part of the furniture so there’s no need to say something so obvious.

Or maybe, it’s because AI is, as Ed Zitron keeps exclaiming, a bubble, and companies are realizing its real-world utility might be less than promised.

For what it’s worth, when companies do talk about AI on their earnings calls, it’s increasingly in the context of investors inquiring about when they’ll see a return on their massive investments.

Rani Molla4h

Epic scores two victories as “Fortnite” returns to Google Play and appeals court keeps injunction against Apple

“Fortnite” maker Epic Games notched two wins Thursday in its drawn-out battle against Big Tech’s app stores. “Fortnite” returned to the Google Play app store in the US, Reuters reports, as Epic continues working with Google to secure court approval for their settlement.

Meanwhile, a US appeals court partly reversed sanctions against Apple in Epic’s antitrust case, calling parts of the order overly broad, but upheld the contempt finding and left a sweeping injunction in place — keeping pressure on Apple to allow developers to steer users to outside payment options and reduce its tight control over how apps can communicate and monetize on iOS.

So many reasons to drop in this month... and now we're on Google Play in the U.S. too!

Android: https://t.co/Z6pkYqYsRI
iPhone: https://t.co/JNpTVneGMN
PC: https://t.co/CPsjp3XNdo pic.twitter.com/TV9b1ZlqfJ
— Fortnite (@Fortnite) December 11, 2025

Jon Keegan5h

Report: AI-powered toys tell kids where to find matches, parrot Chinese government propaganda

You may want to think twice before buying your kids a fancy AI-powered plush toy.

A new report from NBC News found that several AI-powered kids toys could easily be steered to dangerous as well as sexually explicit conversations in a shocking demonstration of the loose safety guardrails in this novel category of consumer electronics.

A report out by the Public Interest Research Group details what researchers found when they tested five AI-powered toys for kids bought from Amazon. Some of the toys offered instructions on where to find matches and how to start fires.

NBC News also bought some of these toys and found they parroted Chinese government propaganda and gave instructions for how to sharpen knives. Some of the toys also discussed inappropriate topics for kids, like sexual kinks.

The category of AI-powered kids toys is under scrutiny as major AI companies like OpenAI have announced partnerships with toy manufacturers like Mattel (which has yet to release an AI-powered toy).

AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show

The category of AI-powered kids toys is under scrutiny as major AI companies like OpenAI have announced partnerships with toy manufacturers like Mattel (which has yet to release an AI-powered toy).

Jon Keegan5h

OpenAI releases GPT-5.2, the “best model yet for real-world, professional use”

After feeling the heat from Google’s recent launch of its powerful Gemini 3 model, OpenAI’s response to its “code red” has been released, reportedly on an accelerated schedule to keep up with the competition.

The company’s new flagship model, GPT-5.2, is out, and the company is calling it “the most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it the “smartest generally-available model in the world” and shared benchmarks that showed it achieving higher scores than Gemini 3 Pro and Anthopic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in some software engineering tests and abstract reasoning, math, and science problems.

In a press release announcing the new model, the company said: “Overall, GPT‑5.2 brings significant improvements in general intelligence, long-context understanding, agentic tool-calling, and vision — making it better at executing complex, real-world tasks end-to-end than any previous model.”

Introducing GPT-5.2

Rani Molla6h

Google sinks on a string of bad news

Google is currently down nearly 2% amid a flurry of bad news for the tech giant:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Google’s much-touted Gemini 3 model “had less of an impact on our metrics than maybe we feared.”
Disney sent Google a cease and desist letter accusing it of infringing Disney’s copyrights after announcing a $1 billion investment in competitor OpenAI.
Waymo recalled basically all of its vehicles — 3,067 — for a software update to fix a high-profile problem they had with driving past stopped school buses.
The AI trade generally is struggling today after Oracle posted underwhelming earnings results yesterday.

Jon Keegan7h

Altman: Gemini 3 had less of an impact than we had feared

There have been a lot “code reds” flying around the AI world recently. But it turns out that the latest, declared by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, may not be as dire as expected.

This morning Altman appeared on CNBC with Disney CEO Bob Iger to discuss Disney’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI. Altman told CNBC that Google’s Gemini 3 has “had less of an impact on our metrics than maybe we feared.”