Microsoft released Bing Chat to a select group of tech writers and others just over a week ago, and it’s been making news ever since. Stories about incorrect answers, surliness and existential grief have dominated the headlines, and Microsoft has already begun making changes (and it looks like removing references to the likes of Kevin Liu and Stratechery from Bing Chat’s repetoire).
For some, this signals doom and gloom, the “failure” of Bing Chat (after only a week), and comparisons to Tay, Microsoft’s too early and too open attempt at a chatbot that got overrun by racist inputs that brought the experiment down.
However, at least one analyst is far more bullish on both the potential for AI, and Microsoft’s position, saying that the company is “leading the pack” in what could be an $800 billion market opportunity. Dan Ives, from the LA based investment firm Wedbush, set Microsoft ($MSFT) with an “outperform” rating and a price range of $280-$300 per share (earlier, another analyst firm, Jefferies, set Microsoft’s stock price at $275-$310 per share, saying the new Bing will provide “a long time lift for the stock”), with what could be a 15% jump in the stock price.
Ives says
“While there will be issues with Bing and ChatGPT it’s clear MSFT now has an opportunity to expand its AI capabilities into a number of areas around the consumer and enterprise ecosystem,” … and that very slice of market share in search that Bing can take from Google will translate to billions of advertising dollars for Microsoft.
As Ives notes, there’s an “AI Big Tech” battle underway. We don’t yet know what moves are coming from Google, Apple, Meta and others, but as an early adopter, Microsoft is leading the pack and analysts are taking note, at least for now.
via Business Insider
Image “an analyst at a stock market analyst desk” via DALL-E 2
