AI boom
An AI boom is a period of rapid growth in the field of artificial intelligence. The current boom originally started gradually in the 2010s with the Deep Learning Phase, but saw increased acceleration in the 2020s. Examples of this include generative AI technologies, such as large language models and AI image generators developed by companies like OpenAI, as well as scientific advances, such as protein folding prediction led by Google DeepMind. This period is sometimes referred to as an AI spring, a term used to differentiate it from previous AI winters. As of 2025, ChatGPT has emerged as the 4th-most visited website globally, surpassed only by Google, YouTube, and Facebook.
History
In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the idea of "Thinking Machines". These were computers that would be able to reason at the same level as humans. He began his well-known "Turing Test", where an interrogator is provided with two materials and they must determine which one was done by artificial intelligence and which one was done by a human being. In 1956, John McCarthy used the term "artificial intelligence" for the first time, eventually being labeled as the father of artificial intelligence.In 1956, the Dartmouth conference was held, organized by John McCarthy, Nathaniel Rochester, Marvin Minsky, and Claude Shannon. This conference is considered the birthplace of artificial intelligence as a field of study, as a workshop was held for 2 months. During this workshop, top researchers explored the concept of creating machines that could mimic the same intelligence as human beings.
In 1958, John McCarthy created the programming language LISP. LISP stands for "List Processing" and works as the main programming language for artificial intelligence. The programming language gained traction at MIT, being used for many of their projects that dealt with AI, such as the IBM 704. While many languages rose and fell, LISP remained the most common programming language for artificial intelligence in the United States even in 2006. LISP became so reliable due to how artificial intelligence works. Artificial intelligence of the time often had lists that constantly change size, making fixed-length methods, such as vectors, unusable.
In 1962, in order to continue research on artificial intelligence, John McCarthy founded Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. SAIL became an important hub for AI research, helping contribute many advancements in the field. Some of these advancements include robotics, medical diagnostics, natural language processing, autonomous vehicles, and more. John McCarthy was also a cofounder of MIT's first Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, now known as MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA. ELIZA was designed to be an emotional tool, being considered a "Rogerian psychotherapist". This was done by making it seem like the chatbot reflected on the user's input, turning questions back to the user. ELIZA is known as the first artificial intelligence chatbot. ELIZA uses strategies such as pattern matching and substitution in order to provide outputs that make users believe they are talking to a real person. Weizenbaum's ELIZA was a huge advancement for regular use AI, acting as a building block for future chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.
Artificial intelligence began being added to new devices. A popular implementation of artificial intelligence would be AI assistants. In 2011, Apple released the iPhone 4S. This new smartphone would include a new AI assistant named Siri, originally developed by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Tom Gruber in 2007. Originally owning their own company, Siri Inc., Apple saw the potential in the assistant and chose to integrate it into their new iOS. Siri was revolutionary, acting as the first mainstream smartphone AI assistant. Navigating or setting tasks became way simpler, only needing to use your voice for a hands-free approach to interacting with your smartphone. After the success of Siri, companies like Google and Amazon took inspiration to create their own AI assistants. In 2014, Amazon released its AI assistant Alexa with their new Echo smart speaker. Alexa allows users to interact with the AI assistant without needing a smartphone, running off a speaker. In 2016, Google released its Google Assistant, having the same functions as Amazon's Alexa. The text-to-image models DALL-E 2 and Midjourney were released in 2022.
ChatGPT, an AI chatbot created by OpenAI, was launched at the end of 2022. It grew to over 100 million users in only 2 months, becoming the fastest-growing software application. As of 2025, ChatGPT remains the 4th-most visited website, behind sites such as Google and Facebook. Other chatbots such as Gemini, Claude, and Copilot fall under the same category, known as large language models. Large language models are designed to be capable of responding appropriately to human language as well as being able to conduct a wide range of tasks. They do this by feeding the models an immense amount of data in order to produce acceptable responses. Present day chatbots incorporate generative AI, including AI image generation. Over half of American adults who responded to a 2025 survey stated they had used an LLM at least once.
Advances
Biomedical
In 2020, DeepMind's AlphaFold program, which is designed to predict protein folding, scored more than 90 in CASP's Global distance test. The structural biologist and Nobel Prize winner Venki Ramakrishnan called the result "a stunning advance on the protein folding problem". The ability to predict protein structures accurately based on the constituent amino acid sequence may accelerate drug discovery and enable a better understanding of diseases.Images and videos
As time passed, the power of generative AI grew stronger. In 2015, initial popularity began to grow with the release of Google's DeepDream. DeepDream is a generative AI that takes inputs from a previous image and morphs them to produce hallucinogenic images.In January 2021, OpenAI released DALL-E, allowing for image generation through text prompts. This allows users to generate any image with a simple prompt. Soon after, other powerful models followed DALL-E, such as Google's Gemini.
The popularity of text-to-video generative AI tools grew exponentially. With the release of models such as OpenAI's Sora in 2024, the use of text-to-video tools became normalized, as people utilized them for advertisements, which saves on production costs and increases production speed.
Generative AI is growing at a rapid rate, outpacing modern-day detection tools. With the common public having access to these tools, it raises concerns about the ethical use of generative AI. There have been multiple occasions where misinformation has been spread over the internet about politics due to a generated or deep-faked video, posing as a security threat.
Language
is a large language model that was released in 2020 by OpenAI and is capable of generating human-like text. A new version called GPT-4 was released on March 14, 2023, and was used in the Microsoft Bing search engine. Other language models have been released, such as PaLM and Gemini by Google and LLaMA by Meta Platforms.Music and voice
In 2016, Google's DeepMind produced WaveNet. WaveNet allowed the generation of raw audio of speech and piano. WaveNet is able to generate different voices by identifying the speakers. This acted as a fundamental building block for future models, allowing audio to be formed from scratch. This wouldn't only help with the production of music, but voice generation as well.Following in the footsteps of WaveNet, OpenAI released Jukebox, the first large-scale model to generate songs. Jukebox allowed for raw audio in different genres and styles, showing that AI had the power to generate complex audio. Google published MusicLM, allowing users to generate raw audio through text prompts. The model can also create full songs with only a hummed melody and text. This marked a leap as music generation tools became more accessible to the public.
In March 2020, 15.ai was founded. 15.ai allowed for voice imitation, playing a major role in the AI boom. With only a short amount of training, it was able to generate acceptable voices and became mainstream as people used it for their favorite fictional characters.
Artificially generated vocals were able to be generated with tools such as ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs allows for the creation of vocals with any public audio. This allows for any celebrity or politician who has voice clips on the internet to be subject to voice imitation, as songs from artists that never existed began being produced. This also led to deep-faking the voices of politicians, as Joe Biden received attention for a fake robocall that voters received.
Impact
Energy
Electricity consumed by hardware used for AI has increased demands on power grids, which has led to prolonged use of fossil fuel power plants which would otherwise have been deactivated.Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all invested in existing or proposed nuclear power plants to meet these demands. In September 2024, Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation Energy to purchase power from a reactor at Three Mile Island which had been shut down in 2019. The reactor is set to reopen in 2028 to provide power to Microsoft's data centers. The reactor is next to the unit which caused the worst nuclear power accident in US history in 1979.