posted in Technology
Other AI Companies Should Be Very Afraid of What Just Happened to Character.AI, According to Its Own Bankruptcy Documents: Be afraid.
futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-afraid-characterai-bankrupcyposted in Technology
Other AI Companies Should Be Very Afraid of What Just Happened to Character.AI, According to Its Own Bankruptcy Documents: Be afraid.
futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-afraid-characterai-bankrupcyReplying to @eicker@lemmy.world
When I first heard about this bankruptcy, one of my first thoughts was, here it goes. This is only the very beginning of the landslide though, so it’s going to take a while before it reaches the bottom, and it’s going to pick up a lot more debris on the way.
Replying to @shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
Or, as the article optimisitically puts it:
The fate of Character.AI, the controversial AI companion platform, may come to stand as a warning.
Wrong. Character.AI may come to be seen as the first car in the train to derail.
Replying to @cecilkorik@piefed.ca
I don’t know. Pets.com failed because they weren’t adequately prepared for their success. AI seems to fail because they overprepared for success that was never coming.
I’m not sure that’s an accurate or defensible perspective on why they failed. From Wikipedia:
Pets.com lacked a workable business plan and lost money on nearly every sale because, even before the cost of advertising, it was selling merchandise for approximately one-third the price it paid to obtain the products.[22] Pets.com tried to build a customer base by offering discounts and free shipping, but it was impossible to turn a profit while absorbing the costs of shipping for heavy bags of cat litter and cans of pet food within a business field whose conventional profit margins are only two to four percent.[22][23] The company hoped to shift customers into higher-margin purchases, but customer purchasing patterns failed to change and during its second fiscal year the company continued to sell merchandise for approximately 27% less than cost, so the dramatic rise in sales during Pets.com’s second fiscal year only hastened the firm’s demise.[22]
Replying to @cecilkorik@piefed.ca
Huh. That’s what I get for only having learned of the matter from engineering textbooks.