The scale of the problem goes beyond individual products. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by the companies that back them, with causes ranging from insufficient funding and technical challenges to competition, scaling difficulties or simply weak demand.

Even OpenAI has its own casualties. A July 9 redesign that turned ChatGPT into a broader "super app" with separate Chat, Codex and Work modes drew criticism as confusing and cluttered, and was rolled back soon after. Stand-alone efforts fared worse: the ChatGPT Atlas browser was discontinued on August 9 after less than a year, its features absorbed into ChatGPT, while the Sora video-sharing platform shut down in March 2026 after struggling with high operating costs and user retention.

Other big names feature too. Apple's revamped Siri, promised as a highlight of Apple Intelligence in 2024, was delayed repeatedly by engineering issues and bugs, contributing to a $250 million settlement over how the iPhone 16's AI capabilities were marketed; the new Siri appeared in the iOS 27 beta in July and is rolling out to English-language users this month. Microsoft's Recall, pitched as a "photographic memory" for Windows, was delayed nearly a year after privacy backlash, and a cybersecurity researcher recently built a tool that could extract data Recall had captured, reviving questions about whether the underlying problem is fixed. Notion Mail, launched in April 2025, is scheduled to shut down on September 22 after users turned to separate AI agents for email instead.