> Missed the boat? […] Watson AI advertising has been everywhere for years.
They were ahead of the game with their original Watson tech, but pretty slow to join and try get up to speed with the current GenAI families of tech.
The meaning of “AI” has shifted to mean “generative AI like what ChatGPT does” in the eyes of most so you need to account for this. When people talk about AI, even though it is a fairly wide field, they are generally referring to a limited subset of it.
The death of IBM’s vision to own AI with Watson was never due to an inability to transition to the right tech. In fact, it was never about tech at all. As an entirely B2B company with a large revenue stream to defend, IBM was never going to go and scrape the entirety of the Internet. Especially not after the huge backlash they ignited with their customers over data rights and data ownership in trying to pitch the Watson they had.
They were ahead of the game with their original Watson tech, but pretty slow to join and try get up to speed with the current GenAI families of tech.
The meaning of “AI” has shifted to mean “generative AI like what ChatGPT does” in the eyes of most so you need to account for this. When people talk about AI, even though it is a fairly wide field, they are generally referring to a limited subset of it.