Can you feel the artificial intelligence (AI) hype cycle hitting a fever pitch? I sure can.

It seems like all any news outlet or investor wants to discuss right now is AI. After OpenAI's lifelike query tool called ChatGPT gained popularity in late 2022 and early 2023, Microsoft decided to pour $10 billion into the start-up and integrate these tools across its Office and Bing search products. Executives like CEO Satya Nadella said it hoped to start increasing its competition with 's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Search services with these new products, potentially taking market share from the dominant search engine provider.

Alphabet investors initially responded to this news bearishly, selling off the stock by 10% to 20% in the weeks following Microsoft's product announcements. But after market share data came out in Google's favor and Alphabet started launching a plethora of AI tools that rivaled Microsoft/OpenAI, investors flipped from bearish to bullish. As of this writing, Alphabet stock is up an impressive 40% year to date (YTD), making the S 500's 9% returns look pale in comparison.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com