Image recognition was the big killer app back then, and there were many stories about its use. Yes, OpenAI with their fancy-pants chat bot has brought out some more hype (mainly from idiotic CEOs who think they can replace everyone with a chat bot), but the demand for nvidia hardware was always there. Actually, with all the hype about AI, it has driven more effort toward creating hardware specifically for AI by other companies, which will eat into nvidia’s dominance in the area.

As for companies making money off of AI, we’re in the stage where they’re trying to figure that out. There were a couple stories about companies trying to charge a subscription fee to monetize AI, but that’s going to fail. As monetization schemes fail, that will pop the AI hype bubble. It’s expensive running these AI models.