IT And Marketing Show Strongest Interest In Adopting Gen AI First

• Currently, 16% of organizations have implemented generative AI in production, while 44% are piloting it for potential applications.
• Interest in deploying generative AI for production applications saw a fivefold increase from the first to the fourth quarter of 2023.
• Healthcare, manufacturing, and education are the three industries most actively pursuing generative AI adoption.
• A majority of organizations, 63%, deem CRM data critical to their generative AI initiatives.

These and many other insights are from Dresner Advisory Services‘ recent Generative AI Report. The advisory firm surveyed its research community of over 8,000 organizations and vendors’ customer communities. The study is global in scope, with 50% of respondents from North America, 26% from EMEA, 19% from Asia/Pacific and 6% from Latin America. Dresner’s report stands out for its in-depth and nuanced analysis of gen AI adoption across global organizations.

News about generative AI has captivated technology leaders. Demand for gen AI-related news and insights dominates many organization leaders’ time. 29% are following gen AI news updates constantly, and 30% say they often check in and see what’s new in gen AI, 24% regularly check the news. Overall, 72% of analytics and business intelligence (BI) professionals have made gen AI news a priority. North American respondents are the most diligent with constantly checking gen AI news, reflecting the region having the highest production use of gen AI.

Key takeaways from the report include the following:

Professionals in IT and marketing report plans to be the first adopters of generative AI, with 44% of IT and 36% of marketing professionals saying adopting gen AI is a primary focus. Operations/ production, sales, and C-level executives also show significant interest in adopting gen AI early. Dresner’s report states that “finance and human resources least often indicate overall interest, exceeding a majority only when aggregating their primary, secondary, and tertiary responses.”

63% of organizations consider CRM data as critical or very important to generative AI. Finance and accounting data is considered the next most important, followed by call center and supply chain data. Dresner’s analysis found that respondents least often expect generative AI to leverage workforce (HR) data. Organizations are wary of using HR data due to privacy concerns combined with the stringent standards and safeguards on data security and its use across regulated industries today.

Gen AI adoption across organizations accelerated rapidly in 2023. From 1Q23 to 4Q23, production use increased nearly fivefold, experimenting increased by 70%, and planned use in 12 months increased by 157%. Dresner’s research results reflect a major shift in generative AI prioritization last year. The report’s authors contend that implementation activity and funding were primarily from autonomous, decentralized sources, not from C-level mandates or sponsors, as it occurred late in fiscal years and into annual budget cycles.

Consumer services lead gen AI production levels at 43%. Technology, business services, and healthcare have the next three highest levels of gen AI production in use today. The education industry reports the highest experimentation rate at 67%, closely followed by healthcare at 62%, while government trails at 50%. The report notes that the government also reports the highest levels for planned use beyond 12 months and no planned use.

40% of organizations consider it critical to achieve productivity and efficiency gains from gen AI. One in three (30%) say improving customer experience and personalization is the next most critical priority, followed by improved search quality and decision-making (26%).

Data privacy concerns are considered critical to 46% of organizations pursuing gen AI initiatives today. Legal and regulatory compliance, the potential for unintended consequences, and ethics and bias concerns are also significant. Less than half of respondents—46% and 43%, respectively—consider costs and organizational policy important to generative AI adoption.