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Text: Thomas Masuch
In court, the lawyer referenced several legal cases supplied by Chat GPT. The only problem was, the cases did not exist and were in fact an AI hallucination. Besides the fine of USD 5,000, the reputational damage suffered by Schwartz and his law firm was significant, given the international media coverage. The lawyer later claimed that he was “unaware” that ChatGPT’s content could be false.
What this whole debacle demonstrates is just how enticing the promise of AI efficiency has become and the extent to which we are prepared put our trust in it. It is apparent that our lives are increasingly shaped by AI, with ChatGPT only a small part of the overall picture. For most of us, it has become almost impossible to tell genuine content from fake, AI-generated material on YouTube, for example, let alone photos and texts.
The boom in AI was also reflected on the stock markets, where Nvidia and other major players for a long time continued on a seemingly never-ending upward trajectory. From the point of view of some investors, Additive Manufacturing is already old hat or yesterday’s news compared to the booming AI sector. However, the AI trend has triggered a certain amount of creativity in the AM sector too. Instead of describing themselves as AM or 3D printing companies, new start-ups seeking investors now prefer to call themselves ‘digital manufacturing’ providers. What they mean by this is that they employ a combination of software, 3D printing, and robotics, powered by AI of course. Even the company profiles of traditional 3D printing providers now include such terms as ‘manufacturing technology company’ or provider of ‘advanced production platforms’.
For critics, there is little new in this development, because it was already offered by the additive process chain years ago. Proponents on the other hand consider it a new business model that incorporates 3D printing. The example of Divergent illustrates that the idea of ‘digital manufacturing’ is certainly appealing to investors: The California-based company has now raised almost USD 1 billion in funding in ten rounds of financing (and has also invested part of this in numerous PBF systems) and is currently (as at March 2026) valued at around USD 2.3 billion.
The new business concept does reflect a general development in the AM industry: Sales are increasingly shifting to the service sector, while providers of AM systems, particularly in Western countries, often have to accept a more modest outlook.
This is not necessarily a sign of decline in AM, but rather an indicator of strong potential for the future. As an enabling technology, AM has reached a certain level of maturity. After all, it is not used to invent parts, but to build them layer by layer.
