{"id":179129,"date":"2025-12-07T10:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T10:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/179129\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T10:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T10:22:09","slug":"why-chatgpts-code-red-could-be-the-pin-that-pops-the-ai-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/179129\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ChatGPT\u2019s \u2018code red\u2019 could be the pin that pops the AI bubble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Altman is privately panicking. In the week that he was supposed to be celebrating ChatGPT<\/a>\u2019s third birthday, the OpenAI boss was facing a crisis on several fronts.<\/p>\n

Just days after an investment report predicted that his company still won\u2019t be profitable by 2030<\/a>, OpenAI was caught up in a data breach that exposed the personal details of ChatGPT users<\/a>. His lawyers were also forced to deny accusations that the artificial intelligence<\/a> chatbot acted as a \u201csuicide coach\u201d<\/a> for a teenager who killed himself earlier this year.<\/p>\n

In an internal memo on Monday, Altman declared a \u201ccode red\u201d<\/a> \u2013 and not even for any of the reasons above. The tech boss told employees that the emergency situation was a result of the massive advances made by OpenAI\u2019s rivals, which could threaten ChatGPT\u2019s position as the world\u2019s leading AI assistant.<\/p>\n

Anthropic, DeepSeek<\/a> and Meta have all made significant progress with their AI offerings, while Apple is also preparing to launch a revamped Siri<\/a> early next year. Even Amazon\u2019s AI assistant Rufus has seen success in recent days. But the biggest competitor comes in the form of Google\u2019s Gemini.<\/p>\n

When the search giant unveiled the latest version of Gemini in November, it was described as a \u201cnew era of intelligence\u201d. Gemini 3 set record scores in benchmark tests, including the best ever result in Humanity\u2019s Last Exam<\/a> \u2013 designed by AI safety researchers to identify artificial superintelligence that matches or surpasses humans. <\/p>\n

Publicly, Altman said it \u201clooks like a great model\u201d, and congratulated Google in a post<\/a> to X. Privately, he acknowledged that ChatGPT was no longer the leading AI on the market. In a message to workers, he reportedly wrote: \u201cWe know we have some work to do, but we are catching up fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

ChatGPT users \u2013 there are now more than 800 million of them \u2013 are also realising that there are other options out there. Shortly after the release of Gemini 3, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said: \u201cI\u2019ve used ChatGPT every day for three years. Just spent two hours on Gemini 3. I\u2019m not going back. The leap is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gemini now counts around 650 million users, up nearly 50 per cent from 450 million in July. This is not even counting the roughly 2 billion people who use Gemini indirectly through the technology being integrated into Google services like Search. Figures from online analytics firm Similarweb show that users are also spending more time using Gemini than ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Losing users, or even just seeing growth stagnate, could prove catastrophic for OpenAI. To even approach the revenue figures projected in the recent investment report \u2013 the one claiming it would not be making any profit this decade \u2013 ChatGPT needs to see huge growth. The forecasts set out by HSBC Global Investment Research put the number of ChatGPT users in 2030 at 3 billion \u2013 nearly half of the world\u2019s adult population. The report also predicted that subscription rates for premium ChatGPT models would rise to 10 per cent of users, though this seems increasingly unlikely if OpenAI falls behind its rivals.<\/p>\n

Failing to hit this level of growth could see the collapse of OpenAI, and potentially most of the industry. The company that began blowing the AI bubble with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 could be the one responsible for its deflation, leading to deserted data centres, trillions in lost wealth, and the risk of recession. If the bubble bursts, the blast radius could span the globe.<\/p>\n

Google boss Sundar Pichai recently acknowledged in an interview a degree of \u201cirrationality\u201d in the current level of investment in artificial intelligence, warning that the fallout from any potential implosion would be unprecedented. \u201cI think no company is going to be immune, including us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In a financial stability report this week, the Bank of England warned that share prices in the UK are at their \u201cmost stretched\u201d since the 2008 financial crisis. Governor Andrew Bailey likened the inflated valuations of tech companies in the US to the dotcom bubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor\u2019s parallel to the Dotcom bubble is spot on, but the reality is more insidious. We are funding a global gambling addiction with debt the real economy cannot afford, all concentrated in a handful of US giants,\u201d Rohit Parmar-Mistry, an AI expert at business automation firm Pattrn Data, told The Independent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this bubble bursts \u2013 and the stretched valuations suggest it will \u2013 it might finally flush out the hype merchants.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is still time for OpenAI to live up to the hype it has generated. And it may have a secret strategy to stay on top.<\/p>\n

The company is currently working on a mystery device<\/a>, and has recruited the man behind the iPhone, Jony Ive, to build it. Altman claims it will increase OpenAI\u2019s value by $1 trillion and will ship \u201cfaster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something before\u201d when it launches next year.<\/p>\n

Speculation surrounding what form OpenAI\u2019s first hardware product will take has ranged from smart glasses to a clothespin. Should it be the latter, and fail as spectacularly<\/a> as previous attempts, it could be the literal pin that pops the bubble.<\/p>\n

Altman is yet to comment publicly about the internal memos or the unfolding turmoil (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent), but the head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, has indirectly addressed the increased competition from Google and what OpenAI is planning to do about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew products are launching every week, which is great \u2013 it pushes us to move faster and keep raising the bar for what an AI assistant can do,\u201d he wrote in a post to X. \u201cOur focus now is to keep making ChatGPT more capable, continue growing, and expand access around the world \u2013 while making it feel even more intuitive and personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

If OpenAI fails, and Google does become the most dominant in the AI space as it did with Search, then Altman\u2019s company could go the way of AltaVista, Ask Jeeves and Lycos \u2013 an early pioneer now fondly remembered as one of the internet\u2019s relics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Altman is privately panicking. In the week that he was supposed to be celebrating ChatGPT\u2019s third birthday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-179129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}