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Generative AI Study Shows Widespread but Uneven Use in Business

Report uncovers a surprising degree of variations and gaps in usage, knowledge levels, and expectations.

Foster City, CA – July 26, 2023: The explosion of interest in Generative AI and its potential applications has created seemingly endless speculation on the impact that the technology is expected to have. Up until recently, however, much of those efforts have been based on conjecture and not real-world data. To address that gap, TECHnalysis Research embarked on a large study of US businesses to gauge and quantify how companies are using the technology (or not), the opportunities they’ve uncovered, the challenges they faced, and much more. The results, it turned out, make it clear that certain aspects of generative AI (GenAI) have quickly become mainstream, but not at all in a consistent manner, especially across different vertical industries.

“It’s impressive to see that 88% of US companies surveyed said they are already using generative AI-based tools and services within their organizations,” noted TECHnalysis Research President Bob O’Donnell, “but they’re clearly not using the technology for the same applications or in the same way. There are significant variations in how different industries value GenAI applications, how they rank potential vendor partners, the amount of knowledge they have about implementations, and much more.”

The study is based on a computer-aided telephone interview (CATI) survey of 1,000 US-based IT decision makers that are involved with their company’s GenAI-related technology deployments. Respondents came from both medium-sized companies (those having from 100-999 employees) and large enterprises (those having 1,000 or more employees) spread across ten different industry verticals. They were asked a range of questions that were designed to investigate the interest, usage, applications, vendor preferences and understanding of GenAI tools and their impact in US-based businesses.

Among the findings are that just 7% of companies that are using GenAI have formal policies that allow and define its use, though 37% are in the process of creating such a policy. Interestingly, in the group of companies that aren’t currently using GenAI, about 10% (or 1% of the total sample) have policies that specifically forbid its use.

Fig. 1

The top GenAI applications that companies are currently using are related to productivity and content creation, but there are significant differences across industries, with both software coding and CRM (customer relationship management) being amongst the top choices in certain verticals. From a benefits perspective, 56% of organizations expect GenAI to improve the efficiency of their employees while 49% are hoping it will enable new revenue streams. The top concern for companies using GenAI tools was security and IP data protection at 55%, while 70% of those not using GenAI cited copyright concerns as their primary reason why.

Only 13% of companies said they were interested in creating their own GenAI models, but when broken down by industry it showed that virtually all of them come from the tech-focused ICT (Information, Communications & Technology) vertical, where 69% said they were very or somewhat likely to do so. In every other vertical, only low single digit percentages expressed interest, clearly highlighting the lack of skills and understanding around advanced GenAI applications in most industries.

Other topics addressed in the study include vendor preferences, the replacement of employees by GenAI tools, as well as pricing and go-to-market strategies.

The highlights of the TECHnalysis Research study, officially titled “A New Beginning: Generative AI in the Enterprise” are available in PDF format and can be downloaded for free here. The complete 151-slide version of the report with detailed breakdowns for every question and additional analysis is available for purchase. For additional information, please e-mail the author at bob@technalysisresearch.com.

Founded by technology market research veteran Bob O’Donnell, TECHnalysis Research, LLC provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.