In Gartner’s product lifecycle, generative AI is at the point where user expectations are highest. But what comes after the hype about AI?

The Gartner cycle consists of five phases. Every new technology needs a trigger that gets people talking about the technology. According to many experts, this will have been the public launch of ChatGPT for generative AI at the end of 2022. It’s been several months now and we’ve reached phase two, which Gartner calls “the inflation of expectations.”

In this phase, which we are currently in, there is a real hype about a technology. Almost every day, companies in the industry are developing new generative AI capabilities for their platforms, some more groundbreaking and useful than others. “Every vendor wants to show that generative AI is built into their products,” a Gartner analyst told VentureBeat.

disillusionment

Every high is followed by a low, and this is also the case in the Gartner cycle. As soon as the novelty is a technology, disillusionment often follows. It’s hard to predict how long the hype surrounding generative AI will last, but the analyst firm is already seeing signs of user disappointment as the predicted productivity revolution has yet to fully embrace generative AI.

According to Gartner, this has to do with misconceptions about what generative AI can and cannot do. Generative AI is often equated with “general artificial intelligence,” the point at which AI’s intellectual abilities match those of humans. It’s the dream of companies like OpenAI to reach that point one day, but we’re still a long way from there.

Once users get over the disenchantment, the market will usually grow to a saturated point where mature offerings are available but productivity gains are “high”. It remains to be seen how generative AI will progress through this cycle over the coming months or maybe even years. Who knows, maybe AI is the magic technology that can break Gartner’s laws.