Zoho Corp’s Founder and Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu, believes the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble is deflating. He stated that corporate customers and analysts are not as enthusiastic about recent AI advancements as they once were, as stated in a report by Hindustan Times. 

In a post on social media platform X, Vembu pointed to signs of dwindling AI hype, such as reports of Microsoft cancelling US data centre leases owing to oversupply concerns and CEO Satya Nadella urging caution against overly optimistic projections about AI, particularly Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).  

However, despite the diminishing hype, Vembu outlined seven practical areas where AI is genuinely useful today:  

1. Speech-to-text, text-to-speech, image recognition, and authentication based on photos, videos, and speech.  
2. Image-to-text (character recognition) and metadata extraction from images, PDFs, and similar sources.  
3. Spam detection, phishing detection, and fraud prevention.  
4. Security threat analysis.  
5. Pattern identification across various fields, including financial, business, legal, medical, engineering, and scientific applications.  
6. Programmer assistance through code generation, particularly for UI development, and debugging support.
7. Marketing content generation, such as designing brochures, websites, campaigns, and emails.  

He cautioned that excessive reliance on AI in marketing can lead to "AI slop" — where people can easily recognise that content is machine-generated.  

Vembu expressed particular excitement about AI’s role in security threat analysis, its extensive potential for pattern recognition in crucial sectors, and its ability to assist programmers.  

“In that sense, autonomous AI agents are like self-driving cars: don't get too taken by the hype but engineers in the trenches are making progress,” he wrote.