A shoe company just became an AI company, and Wall Street lost its mind. Allbirds rebranded itself as Newbird AI this week and watched its stock price multiply by seven. Yes, seven times. For shoes that are now apparently powered by artificial intelligence.
This absurd moment is part of what The Vergecast is calling "AI silly season." It's that point in a hype cycle where companies slap AI onto their name and investors throw money at anything with those two letters. We've seen this movie before with blockchain, with cloud, with mobile.
But here's the real question: are we at peak AI, or just a peak? The Vergecast dug into new Stanford research showing AI is actually getting better at lots of tasks. So the technology itself is advancing, even as the hype reaches ridiculous levels.
For anyone using AI tools in their daily work, this matters because it's getting harder to separate signal from noise. Real improvements in AI capabilities are happening alongside companies cynically rebranding to chase stock pumps. You need to be able to tell the difference.
The "AI is inevitable" narrative that companies love to push serves a specific purpose. It makes their pivot seem visionary rather than opportunistic. It pressures competitors to follow suit. And it distracts from the actual question: does this product need AI, or does this company just need a stock boost?
The data says AI keeps improving. The vibes say we're in bubble territory. Both things can be true at once, which makes this moment particularly tricky to navigate if you're trying to make smart decisions about which AI tools to adopt or invest in.
