Generative AI stands to impact nearly every industry and add value to the global economy. Statista projects the generative AI market will reach $44.89 billion in 2023 and grow at a 20.40 percent CAGR to total $207 billion by 2030. Here’s where industry thought leaders see this technology delivering the greatest value to businesses in the short term.
Innovation
Todd Fisher, co-founder and CEO of CallTrackingMetrics:
Generative AI will usher in a new era of innovation and economic growth. In 2024, we’ll see a tidal wave of business adoption as companies implement GenAI to automate tasks, improve productivity and create new products and services. It will also transform how we interact with computers, with more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces created with natural language. GenAI is the most disruptive technology since the internet, and I’m eager to see how it shapes the future of work in 2024 and beyond.
Versatility
Daniel Fallmann, CEO of Mindbreeze:
In the realm of data analysis, generative AI aids in predictive modeling and scenario planning. By rapidly processing vast datasets, businesses can make informed decisions and adapt real-time strategies through the generation of enterprise-specific questions and answers. This predictive power extends to supply chain management, optimizing logistics, and minimizing disruptions. Additionally, cybersecurity will see advancements as generative AI enhances threat detection and response mechanisms. Generative AI will also permit companies to access 360-degree views of relevant information, regardless of department or industry. This creates a singular access point for information retrieval, leading to high-level business insights.
In essence, the most outstanding value of generative AI for businesses in 2024 lies in its ability to elevate creativity, streamline operations, enhance customer interactions, refine data analysis, and fortify cybersecurity measures. The technology’s versatility positions it as a cornerstone for innovation across various business sectors.
Katherine Van Zalen, VP of Product at ContractPodAi:
These tools also provide value to developers by identifying patterns or possible errors in code, standardizing code, or, for admins, identifying themes in tickets or even generating release notes. The great thing about generative AI is its versatility; whether it is used to manage contracts, time, or productivity, businesses will see demonstrated value from its capabilities given it is developed and implemented intentionally.”
Lindsey Robertson, Women Who Code Data Science:
Generative AI holds promise to expand the range of tasks and functions that can be supported or enhanced, particularly in content creation, design, and data augmentation. It could significantly cut down time spent on drafting text, creating graphics, or generating training data for machine learning models. For instance, GPT-4 or its counterparts could churn out high-quality draft articles, advertisements or reports, thus freeing up human resources for more strategic, creative tasks. Moreover, AI could generate numerous design prototypes, do basic analysis or augment data, making processes more efficient. This technology might also enable faster, personalized marketing at scale by generating tailored content for different audience segments. Furthermore, generative AI could bolster innovation in product development by suggesting novel combinations of features or materials.
Customer Support and Experience
Fallmann:
One of the primary areas that stands to benefit significantly in 2024 is customer support. With improved natural language processing capabilities, generative AI can handle routine inquiries, providing instant responses and freeing human agents to focus on more complex issues. This not only enhances efficiency but also contributes to better customer experiences.
Derick Jaros, eCommerce Head of Industry at Yext:
In 2024, I believe conversational AI will further merge with site search to become a staple of the online retail experience. This combination has the potential to revolutionize ecommerce by creating a customer experience that streamlines information exchanges between retailers and customers.
Currently, customers may find chat annoying as it takes the form of a pop-up box on a retailer’s site and shares canned responses, often prompting them to talk to a live support team member anyway. However, I think the rise of conversational AI means retailers will increasingly prepare new user interfaces (UI) that will transcend the traditional, separated chat box and site search model to create experiences that improve communication between brands and shoppers.
This new UI will make it easy for customers to quickly find products and answer complex questions while mimicking the conversations that shoppers are used to having in-store. Not only will this benefit online shoppers, but in-store ones will be able to turn to the same AI tool for various instances, including when they have a question but can’t find an associate.
Ultimately, I believe combining generative AI-based chat with site search will help retailers reimagine personalized assistance experiences in the new year.
Arun “Rak” Ramchandran, President & Global Head – Consulting & GenAI Practice, Hi-Tech & Professional Services at Hexaware:
Customer experience will see the biggest change due to generative AI. A point of emphasis will be put on personalized interactions. AI can analyze large amounts of consumer data to tailor recommendations and responses and provide services based on individual preferences. This new level of personalization will create a more engaging and positive experience for customers. Chatbots and VR will also likely become more sophisticated with generative AI – offering improved communication and seamless interactions. Also, predictive analytics backed by generative AI will better anticipate customer needs and expectations while proactively addressing issues before customers even notice them.
Brian Steele, VP of Product Management at Gryphon.ai:
In 2024, I expect that generative AI will be used ubiquitously across enterprises. For example, in call centers, summarizing customer conversations and identifying key actions and concepts with GenAI will lead to significant benefits for improving the customer experience by providing intelligent insights for agents to use in their conversations. As more GenAI tools become available, the implementation and cost will become less of a lift for organizations.
Along with data analytics, GenAI will assist with content development, speeding up the time to deliver responses to customer inquiries. In addition, the tools can provide examples of how to respond to customers, especially if enterprises train systems using their proprietary data.” Further, he states, “In the year ahead, I believe generative AI will deliver the greatest value to reduce administrative tasks while increasing time for more value-oriented work.
Greater Efficiency
Van Zalen:
Going into 2024, we expect to see CEOs and business leaders continue to invest heavily in generative AI capabilities. Generative AI tools that are built upon the appropriate guardrails and ethical frameworks can safely drive better outcomes in many different use cases. One area where we expect to see generative AI deliver even more value to businesses in 2024 is operational efficiency. There are several use cases where generative AI tools can be leveraged to improve overall outcomes and performance among teams.
Contract management is an example of one area where companies can improve efficiency using generative AI. Contracts, the foundation of every business, are important to the success of teams across an organization – HR, sales, procurement. Generative AI tools can supplement legal work by identifying possible contractual risks, performing deep analysis, drafting, and more.
Cynthia Gumbert, CMO, SmartBear:
With the promise and explosive growth of generative AI in 2023, I see this becoming the most extremely compressed hype cycle in history, where the promise of the technology will be quickly solidified into tangible, sustainable and growing value and new ways to work. Getting past the peak of hype quickly means that 2024 will see generative AI and LLM’s embedded into nearly every tool people use to augment their work, which is also happening quickly. Most people will continue using the tools they have been using at work for many years, but all those tools are becoming amplified with AI features. The most value to businesses will come without the need to re-train their workforce.
Robertson:
The crux is that businesses could leverage generative AI to automate routine creative tasks, quicken the ideation process, and enhance personalized engagement, which in turn will fuel productivity and innovation. Do more, faster is the theme for businesses adopting AI in 2024.
Laurel McKenzie, Lead Senior Behavioral Scientist at CoachHub:
Generative AI isn’t going anywhere, and people are going to increasingly use it to lighten their workloads. Generative AI can take the spark of an idea you have and fan the flames, producing more thorough, robust ideas than you would on your own. In the L&D space, I expect to see more and more generative AI-written resumes and cover letters popping up because people have figured out how to leverage these tools to generate meaningful responses.
Although reducing the toil and time it takes to accomplish tasks is great, there are cons to generative AI. If you become too reliant on these types of tools, your ability to critically think for yourself could be threatened. Despite dangers like these, the next billion-dollar idea is going to be from someone who figured out how to monetize the free version of these tools.
Words of Caution
Gumbert:
2024 will be the year of heavy monetization of AI features – free is no longer the de facto. Many emerging free or open source tools may fall quickly by the wayside in favor of enterprise scale, secure, private, and IT-managed versions of trusted tooling. The value promise that we saw in 2023 with tremendous time and capacity savings will be balanced out by much more pricey AI capabilities, as vendors seek to monetize the value of their AI-enabled products.
Brett Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at Semarchy:
Generative AI still scores high on hype – but 2024 isn’t the year for a rash rollout. It sometimes seems like generative AI is sweeping the business world. Not so. We remain in the hype cycle, with forward-thinking organizations refraining from full-blown rollouts for the foreseeable future. Caution is important; organizations that rapidly deploy generative AI integrations have already faced blowback in the form of lawsuits and investor scrutiny. To avoid these consequences, market leaders will use 2024 to prepare their workforce and data for a large-scale rollout down the road. This process will include categorizing, vetting and understanding massive amounts of organizational data; preparing the workforce through on-the-job training; and testing minor applications of generative AI through repetitive tasks like match-and-merge.
How Businesses Will Achieve the Greatest Value
Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI:
The businesses that realize the greatest value in 2024 from generative AI will be the ones that are clear about their core business goals. The options are nearly unbounded, so like all technologies, the best way to get a real return on investment is by knowing the biggest opportunities in your business. 2023 has very much been a year of exploration and experimentation. That was necessary, but I believe that in 2024, we’ll start to see organizations connect what they’ve learned with their business’s core problems and realize the impact.
Sean Mahoney, General Manager and Vice President of Ensono:
The greatest value will come with equipping people with generative AI tools to do their jobs better in 2024. Generative AI is a people-oriented tool: With the right prompt engineering, skills training and knowledge sharing, teams across any department at an organization can unlock intelligence that answers questions quickly, transcribes meetings, produces content and writes code, which will greatly transform how we work in 2024. 2023 might have seen the introduction of these tools, but in 2024, we’ll see true benefits as well as challenges. The key to unlocking value, however, is fine-tuning appropriate foundational models. Equipping people with the knowledge, resources, governance, and training to use AI correctly will make the difference compared to companies that are moving too fast and not considering the negative implications of uneducated, ill-informed, or unregulated AI use.
