Source: China Foundation News, Reporter: Zhang Ling
ChatGPT has been born for more than half a year, although the international and domestic market application side innovation has continued, but with the monthly ChatGPT visits have dropped sharply, some funds have also shown signs of retreat, and the industry is worried about whether this wave of AIGC will eventually evolve into the millennial Internet bubble.
In this regard, a number of industry insiders told China Fund News that the weak traffic of AI applications such as ChatGPT is a normal phenomenon, and it does not mean that ChatGPT traffic is about to peak, the current AI market is in the stage of "a hundred schools of thought contending, a hundred flowers blooming", although there is a partial bubble, but far from the overall bubble. In the long run, there are still many investment opportunities in AI themes, but in the future, it is also necessary to dynamically track industry changes and application implementation, while being vigilant against related risks.
To this end, China Fund News interviewed Liu Yuan, deputy director of the strategic investment department of Jiutai Fund and manager of Jiutai Flexible Allocation Hybrid (LOF) Fund, for an in-depth analysis.
Liu Yuan
Deputy Director of Strategic Investment Department of Jiutai Fund
Jiutai Flexible Allocation Hybrid (LOF) Fund Manager
01
Negative growth for the first time in June, ChatGPT traffic is about to peak?
According to the latest data released by web analytics company Similarweb, ChatGPT global visits in June saw the first negative month-on-month growth since its launch, falling by 9.7%. From January to May this year, the global traffic of ChatGPT's official website increased by 131.6%, 62.5%, 55.8%, 12.6% and 2.8% respectively. Overall, the monthly growth rate of ChatGPT visits has shown a downward trend.
In addition to ChatGPT, the weekly traffic growth of mainstream chat AI tools has declined since May, and AceCamp Research data shows that after Google's Bard opened in early May, although the number of visits rose sharply in the first week, it then declined.
So why is the recent decline in visits to AI apps such as ChatGPT? Does this mean ChatGPT traffic is about to peak?
Liu Yuan said that there may be two reasons for the decline in visits, one is that the traffic is limited, the total time of ChatGPT users has entered the platform period, from March 2023, OpenAl for Plus paid users GPT-4 access continuous decline threshold, while OpenAI will shift its focus to the B-side GPT API interface, hoping to provide a better user experience for more applications as a plug-in, and the company's strategic positioning will affect the tilt of the company's resources.
On the other hand, from mid-May 2023, OpenAI integrated ChatGPT into the ISO system and released an APP version, resulting in a slight decline in recent data (the time spent by mobile users accessing ChatGPT web pages through mobile devices such as mobile phones).
02
Should we worry about the "AI bubble"?
In fact, ChatGPT has been born for more than half a year, and the domestic and international market application side innovation has continued, such as after Baidu first released Wenxin's words, Alibaba Cloud, Huawei, iFLYTEK, Tencent, etc. have successively launched AI models or related products. Many listed companies have also continued to deploy in the field of artificial intelligence around market segments such as computing power, applications, and chips.
In the stock market, many U.S. technology stocks have hit record highs after experiencing skyrocketing. Domestically, under the global AI wave, the A-share artificial intelligence field continued to soar, with strong performance in computing power, applications, large models, chips, intelligence and other fields, and the net value of related thematic funds continued to reach new highs.
However, it is worth noting that after climbing to a high level in the first quarter, the AI sector has also seen a relatively large correction recently, and as of July 7, the Wande ChatGPT index has the largest retracement of nearly 20% in the year.
Behind the sharp fluctuation in stock prices, northbound funds are also continuing to reduce their holdings. According to data from Dongcai Choice, according to the total net trading amount of individual stocks in the industry, the electronics, computer and media industries have been reduced by northbound funds by more than 2.5 billion yuan since July.
In this context, many people in the industry have also begun to worry about whether AIGC will really evolve into the Internet bubble crisis of the millennium. For example, American economist David Rosenberg recently said that the current artificial intelligence investment boom is reminiscent of the Internet bubble at the beginning of the 21st century, and the weight of technology stocks in the S&P 500 index is as high as 27%, which is consistent with the level before the outbreak of the Internet bubble crisis.
"At present, artificial intelligence has attracted a lot of attention and funds in the market, and it is expected that for a long time in the future, artificial intelligence will have a very far-reaching impact on our lives and work, including the entire social form, and may undergo a profound revolutionary change." Liu Yuan of Jiutai Fund believes that at present, the international AI market has entered the stage of "a hundred schools of thought contending and a hundred flowers blooming", and the country is also in a stage of rapid development, but at the same time, some bubble phenomena have appeared, such as high valuation of enterprises, high market expectations and large deviations between the actual landing of business, and the frequent reduction of holdings and cash out by major shareholders of listed companies.
03
Long-term optimistic about AI investment opportunities
Looking forward to future investment opportunities, some institutions said that the overall prosperity of the AI industry is moderate and upward, and some companies with AI themes in the early stage have risen greatly, and there is little room for the entire sector to rise sharply in the short term. There is no obvious short-term expectation difference in the industry, and a large amount of funds are squatting for the implementation of domestic AI policies and the first batch of AI filings.
After several months of evolution, the AI market has newly walked out of the robot and intelligent driving branches, and the market will be partial to the stock capital market in 2023, and the departure of the new branch means that the hot spots are scattered and TMT is difficult to sustainably rise. Coupled with the market attention in July, most computer companies performed poorly (poor 2G business needs, slow recovery of 2B business), further aggravating the risk of diversion of funds to other sectors. From the perspective of industrial progress, the domestic AI model began to land in July, Chinese IT personnel are more volatile and diligent, and there is hope to see good AI innovation in China in August, September and the fourth quarter, and researchers are optimistic about the AI market in August and September.
Liu Yuan of Jiutai Fund said that the valuation of some AI sub-industries is indeed at a relatively high level, and in the future, it is still necessary to comprehensively judge the allocation value based on industry trends and fundamental changes.
"The current market attitude towards artificial intelligence has gradually fermented from fresh and curious to general optimism since the beginning of the year, which is reflected in the willingness to add the long-term AI performance of relevant listed companies to the current market capitalization, and we are not opposed to moderate foresight and assumptions, but will still focus more on the verifiable fundamentals of the industry and enterprises." Liu Yuan said that this round of AI-driven market, it is expected that with the disclosure of the semi-annual report will enter the shock range, companies with strong fundamentals and strong certainty of new business will gain a foothold on the new stock price platform, and then gain market recognition by constantly verifying their own logic.
A group of hyped companies will be abandoned by the market, and the fluctuations in this process will be relatively large. "We are cautious in the short term, but we are still relatively optimistic in the long term. From the perspective of investment opportunities in the industry, we can pay attention to companies with reliable fundamentals and excellent texture in AI-related sub-industries such as computing power, communication connections, storage, games, and ToB applications. Liu Yuan said.
Risk Warning: The materials are for reference only and are not intended as any investment advice or investment commitment. Funds are different from financial instruments that can provide fixed income expectations, such as bank deposits, and when investors purchase fund products, they may not only share the income generated by fund investments according to their holdings, but also bear the losses caused by fund investments. Investors should carefully read the fund legal documents such as the Fund Contract, Prospectus and Product Information Summary. The past performance of a fund is not indicative of its future performance and the performance of other funds managed by the fund manager does not constitute a guarantee of the performance of the fund. Mainland funds have been operating for a short time and cannot reflect all stages of stock market development.
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