AI's Big Leaps Are Slowing. That Could Be a Good Thing.

The advance of cutting-edge AI is showing signs of slowing.

- Asa Fitch

For many companies looking to harness the technology, that wouldn't be a terrible thing.

Excitement about AI reached feverish levels at the end of 2022 with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT and has stayed red-hot since. A regular cadence of more impressive large language models from startups and big tech companies alike has kept the party going, lifting stocks—including shares of AI-chip giant Nvidia—to lofty heights.

Nearly three years later, it looks increasingly as though those models are plateauing.

This summer, Meta Platforms delayed the rollout of the next iteration of its flagship AI model, called Llama 4 Behemoth, because engineers were struggling to significantly improve it.

The latest model from OpenAI, called GPT-5, was delayed, and when it did come out it didn't measure up to the hype. Normally ebullient Chief Executive Sam Altman has sounded more like an AI realist recently, saying at a media dinner that he thought investors had become overexcited about the technology.

But if the leading AI tools indeed are losing steam, that wouldn't be a huge problem for many of the companies trying to integrate AI into how they work. It might even be welcome.

Generative AI is already powerful and useful in business—for summarizing large texts, for example, and helping employees code or write emails. Other more mundane forms of AI that predated the language-model explosion have also become increasingly useful, for tasks such as processing invoices or giving recommendations on how to manage a fleet of vehicles.