GenAI - A leap forward

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new buzzword at the moment, with business leaders touting its importance and the significant impact it will have on the way we conduct business. The reality is that AI has been around for a while, but in the past few years has taken a great leap in terms of its usefulness and accessibility for the general public.

AI is a blanket phrase for computers performing tasks that would usually require human intelligence to perform. It is exceptionally good at recognising patterns and making predictions and is being widely used already. For example, the facial recognition on your phone or the personalised ads you see pop up on the web are all a result of AI. Generative AI (GenAI) is an evolution of this, whereby it can use existing data and patterns to create completely new content. GenAI is what is causing such a stir recently, due to the broadness of its potential applications and how disruptive it could be for many industries.

According to PwC’s 2023 Emerging Technology Survey, 73% of US companies have already adopted AI into their business, with 54% using GenAI. With many firms creating their own GenAI chatbots, employees can use these to research legislation, summarise spoken meetings using speech to text, or craft an email from scratch. Broader use cases see programmers using GenAI to help them write code, product designers using it to evaluate new designs, or marketers to identify leads and develop marketing strategies. In the creative industry GenAI has been even more disruptive, with unique videos, pictures or songs being crafted from a simple chat prompt.

Every so often a new technology comes along that completely changes the way in which the world operates. In recent times, this has been things like the internet, or smartphones. Many are now claiming that GenAI will be the next big shift, and that its impact on the future will be unprecedented.

The first ever global summit on artificial intelligence was hosted in November last year, where 28 nations declared the need to work together to manage the risks associated with such powerful technology. Public figures like Elon Musk even described it as a ‘threat to humanity’, given the potential for AI to become more intelligent than its human creators.

While the threat of world domination is hopefully something on the far horizon, when it comes to AI, no one can really say how fast the technology will evolve, particularly when it is able to learn and teach itself.

With access to GenAI available to everyone through platforms like ChatGPT, now is the time to consider whether it can be helpful to you or your business.