During a 2023 survey conducted among professionals in the United States, it was found that 37 percent of those working in advertising or marketing had used artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with work-related tasks. Healthcare, however, had the lowest rate of AI usage with only 15 percent of those asked having used it at work. The rate of adoption in marketing and advertising is understandable, as it is the industry that most weaves together art and creative mediums in its processes.

Generative AI linked to education

Those positions that require a higher level of education are most at risk of being automated with generative AI in the U.S. This is simply because those jobs that require less formal education are rarely digital positions and are more reliant on physical labor. Jobs that require tertiary education, however, are still the least likely to be automated overall, even with the added influence of generative AI.

ChatGPT has competitors

While the OpenAI-developed ChatGPT is the most well-known AI program and the currently most advanced large language model, - other competitors are catching up. While just over half of respondents in the U.S. had heard of or used ChatGPT, nearly half of respondents had also heard of or used Bing Chat. Google’s Bard was slightly behind, with only around a third of Americans having heard of or used it.

Tech, media, and telecoms industries were the most diligent adopters of AI in 2024, with some 44 percent of respondents using AI in their business. AI was most used in the product and/or service development functions, with only those working in consumer goods and retail using it less than 20 percent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is heavily used for service operations and strategy and corporate finance, with nearly all industries reporting around 20 percent usage of AI in these functions. The greatest use of AI in product making was in the risk industry, with over 38 percent of respondents using AI in 2022. The use of AI in manufacturing and marketing is low, as these can require individual human instincts and so lend themselves less easily to AI applications.

AI adoption isn’t easy

It is no easy task to adapt a new technology of such widespread use as AI. There are numerous pitfalls and problems, both from the use of the technology itself but also from actions by outside agents causing issues. Companies considered cybersecurity to be chief among the risks being mitigated when adapting AI in 2023. In addition, regulatory compliance was a considerable challenge, stemming from a strong need to respect information privacy among users.

Employment faces steep headwinds

AI will have a considerable effect on the labor needs of nations worldwide. Of the many professions, office and administrative support are facing the greatest risk of automation. These are linear and formulaic positions, with many of their duties delegable to advanced programs.

In 2024, artificial intelligence adoption has experienced a remarkable surge across global organizations. The percentage of companies integrating AI into at least one business function has dramatically increased to 72 percent, representing a substantial leap from 55 percent in the previous year. Even more striking is the exponential growth of generative AI, which has been embraced by 65 percent of organizations worldwide. This represents an impressive increase of over 30 percentage points, highlighting the technology's swift transition from an emerging trend to a mainstream business tool.

Generative AI adoption has surged across industries, with the technology sector leading the charge at an impressive 88 percent usage rate across functions in 2024. This rapid integration of AI technologies is reshaping business operations, particularly in marketing and sales, where AI has found widespread application as a creative assistance tool. However, this swift adoption has not come without challenges, as concerns about regulatory compliance have grown in tandem with the increased usage. Varied adoption rates across sectors While the technology industry stands at the forefront of generative AI adoption, other sectors are not far behind. Professional services, advanced industries, and media and telecom all report adoption rates of around 80 percent across functions. Interestingly, in the tech, media, and telecom industry, IT departments lead in generative AI application usage at 34 percent, followed by product development at 17 percent. This trend differs in the energy, resource, and industrial sector, where operations take the lead at 23 percent, with IT following at 17 percent. Evolving landscape of AI implementation As organizations increasingly integrate generative AI, the landscape of implementation is evolving. Automation and agentic AI have emerged as the most intriguing technological developments for organizations in 2024. This shift is accompanied by a notable increase in technical skills related to AI, indicating broader usage. However, the rise in regulatory concerns suggests that governments and authorities are stepping up their oversight of the industry. This dual trend of increased adoption and heightened regulatory scrutiny underscores the complex environment in which AI technologies are being deployed and developed.

The adoption rate of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to rapidly grow in the information technology sector (IT). In 2022, nearly 47 percent of IT executives expected their companies to have widescale adoption in AI in their respective companies.

The adoption rate of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to gain considerable importance in product development companies worldwide between 2022 and 2025. Currently, companies operating in that sector were mostly reporting limited adoption of AI in their production cycles. Technology executives expected this to change considerably by 2025.

During a 2022 survey conducted among professionals in the United States, it was found that 29 percent of respondents belonging to Gen Z used generative AI tools. Moreover, 28 percent of Gen X and 27 percent of millennials respondents used such tools, respectively.

Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to algorithms that focus on producing new content, such as text, images, music, speech, code, or video. Generative AI is part of deep learning, the machine learning branch which aims to reduce the manual work of programming parameters for AI. Currently, researchers and developers use generative AI in various industries, like advertising and marketing, but rumors suggest that more businesses and consumers will adopt this technology in the near future to perform a wide range of tasks.

ChatGPT

An example of generative AI is ChatGPT, the famous chatbot software launched in November 2022 by the American startup OpenAI, which is also well known for its art generative AI program Dall-E. The chatbot can produce text based on given inputs, recognize mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT has quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the major breakthroughs of the last few decades in the technology industry. Indeed, it was the fastest IoT service to accumulate a one-million user base, in only five days.

The adoption rate of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to grow in companies operating in the finance sector from 2022 to 2025. In 2022, nearly half of executives expected their companies to have widescale adoption in AI in their companies. In the 2025, they expected the same ratio would be exceeded for critical implementation of AI.

Generative AI saw significant growth across financial services in 2024, with 52 percent of survey respondents reporting active use of the technology - up from 40 percent in 2023. The companies primary generative AI use case was enhancing customer experience and engagement, particularly through applications like chatbots, virtual assistants, and agent support tools.

Singapore was the nation with the highest combined value where enterprises were exploring or had actively deployed AI within their business in 2023. China, India, and the UAE were all close behind, with over 80 percent of respondents claiming exploration or deployment of AI. Western countries, in particular European mainland nations such as France, Germany, and Italy, had the highest rate of non-usage or no exploration of AI, though even the U.S. had a similar share of enterprises not engaged with AI. This may reflect the specialized industries that thrive in those countries, needing individualized human skills to operate.

Combined, China had the highest rate of exploring and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) globally in 2022. It was followed closely by India and Singapore. This lead was also marked when accounting only for the deployment of AI in organizations in China, with India following. Both nations had a nearly 60 percent deployment rate. When accounting only for exploration, however, the leading nations were Canada and the United States.

AI in Europe on the rise

Europe contains an exceptionally vibrant technology sector. This is particularly true in the field of AI, where funding for startups specializing in this high-demand technology stood at more than 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in late 2022. Many of Europe’s major economies are leaders in the exploration and deployment of AI and are ahead of the global curve.

Opportunities for early adopters

Those businesses that begin using AI early will find it easier to reap the benefits. The most desirable effect, or at least the one that directly affects most businesses, is a revenue increase as it underpins the whole of their business model. The most important benefit of AI usage in enterprises is in supply chain management and human resources.

Major improvements to supply chains provide a major boost to revenue by using AI to map out idiosyncrasies and problematic stops. When it comes to human resources, the use of AI can drastically reduce time in hiring cycles by enabling AI-driven algorithms to select those candidates whose resume most aligns with the job requirements.

The adoption rate of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to grow in companies operating in supply chains and manufacturing industries from 2022 to 2025. In 2022 over a third of executives expected their companies to have a widescale adoption of AI in their companies.

According to a global survey conducted in 2024, almost 70 percent of respondents in the pharmaceutical industry had partially employed artificial intelligence in the area of research. Furthermore, just over a third of pharmaceutical organizations used AI in clinical trials.

Around one-third of travel managers surveyed worldwide in late-2024 said that the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) at their companies for business travel programs was important, but not a priority in that year. Only 14 percent said that they were already using AI for travel management tasks.

The functions related to product development, IT and cybersecurity, and marketing, sales and customer service are where most of the generative AI (GenAI) adoption is concentrated in global organizations. The use of the technology is the highest in higher levels of expertise. Over 50 percent and 70 percent of the respondents, with respectively high expertise and very high expertise, report to be using generative AI in a limited or at-scale implementation.

According to a global 2023 survey, 43 percent of company CEOs were planning to explore options for the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, as opposed to 39 percent of CMOs stating the same. An equal amount of CEOs and CMOs - 19 percent - were planning to adopt AI immediately but only across some business units/operations.

In 2024, Singapore had an artificial intelligence (AI) deployment rate of 53 percent. According to the same source, this was higher than the global adoption level, and among the highest AI adoption rates in the world.

As of 2024, the industries of communication, media, and technology, products, and healthcare and life sciences were tied as the ones with the largest share of organizations with fully operationalized transparency measures worldwide. About nine percent of the respondents in this industry reported to have fully operationalized at least 50 percent of the listed measures to increase transparency and explainability across the development, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence (AI). The products' industry was also the one with the highest overall adoption of AI-related transparency measures by the surveyed organizations, having an average of 1.51 adopted measures.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, 57 percent of companies in India had deployed AI in their business. By contrast, only 27 percent of the companies were exploring AI as a future possibility. AI adoption rate was higher among larger companies in comparison to smaller ones.