Microsoft-Backed $1.5 Billion AI Startup “Builder.ai” Shuts Down After Indian Engineers Linked to AI Answers Revealed

Whoa, okay, so let’s dive into this whirlwind topic—AI. It’s like magic, literally moving at lightning speed. Or something faster than that? Who knows! While everyone seems to be all hyper over AI, there’s this little company, Builder.ai, poking us to rethink all this stuff. Kind of like, hey, hold up! Let’s not just run blindly into this techno-future.

Millions and billions are getting thrown at AI left, right, and center. Take NVIDIA—it’s like this massive hulking giant now, hitting the trillion-dollar mark. Crazy, right? But, plot twist: not all’s glittery in the AI world. Some folks are getting, well, kinda sneaky. They’re pulling wool over eyes, showing off what they call “AI” when it’s, um, not really AI. Enter Builder.ai. Their deal was all about automation magic, or so they said.

Now, get this—they flaunted this neural network, Natasha. Sounds fancy, right? The promise? Build apps like a Lego set—pick pieces, slap them together, and voila, you’ve got an app. But in reality, yeah, not quite as they advertised. What actually happened? Customer requests zipped over to an office in India. Picture 700 superhuman programmers hustling and typing away like there’s no tomorrow. Tweet from Bernhard Engelbrecht? Nailed it. Eye-opening stuff.

Anyway, Builder.ai pitched Natasha as this AI-driven wizardry for app creation, which was supposed to need minimal human hands. Microsoft even thought it was cool enough to drop a staggering $445 million on them. AI replacing humans? Think again. What they really did was stretch the truth, making it seem like their AI speedily churned out custom apps. They actually hit a billion-plus valuation before, well, reality hit.

Saw this visual of how they “turn your voice to code” and honestly, it’s slick. But hey, reality bites. Behind all that snazzy AI talk, Builder.ai was really just a huge crew of Indian engineers doing all the heavy lifting. The “AI” was flashy, but it was the folks in the background making it work. Natasha was no magic bullet; it relied on people using templates and tweaking them as needed.

Now they’re under the microscope, both in the US and UK. Even declared bankruptcy. If you ask me, job not well done. Does it mean AI’s all smoke and mirrors? Nah, but Builder.ai’s story is, well, a hefty reminder. Not everything that glitters is AI gold. Even with Microsoft’s big bucks and other big names on board, sometimes it just doesn’t pan out. So, let’s not just hop on every tech bandwagon without looking, alright?