Revolutionary is the word for the first quarter of 2023 as the technology industry mainstreams Generative AI. Simply stated, we believe that Generative AI platforms will have a larger impact on consumers, businesses and enterprises than any other technology to date. Yes, any technology to date. The technology industry is entering a new age, and we have formed Generative AI Solutions to provide consulting, prototyping, and Generative AI as a service to help companies leverage the power of Generative AI.
Industry Context in Brief – The Next Revolution of the Tech Industry
Generative AI hit the consumer mainstream late in 2022 with OpenAI’s release of ChatGTP. This rapidly gained traction, reaching 100 million users in just two months, the fastest adoption rate of any technology in history. Concurrently, image-based generative AI technologies like Midjourney and DALL-E garnered attention in late 2022 with steep adoption curves in early 2023. All of these technologies provided the seed for the ‘Art of the Possible’ for generative AI and created the energy, enthusiasm, and concerns for the technology that exist today.
Microsoft, Google and others are actively investing tens of billions in the space and now engaging in a new generative AI platform war. In doing so, they are transforming the search sector of the tech industry today and several other sectors of tech will follow. Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and other technology juggernauts are radically redesigning their entire product suites. The best example of this is Microsoft’s release and embedding of Co-Pilot across its entire suite of products.
The activity in the start-up and VC space is highly robust in a very tough funding environment. According to NFX, investment in the generative AI space is massive with over $6B invested across more than 500 start ups over the last several years. Over the last few years, venture capital firms crowned several unicorns including OpenAI, Hugging Face, Lightricks, Jasper, Glean, Stability AI, and Zapier. Entirely new types of companies emerged like large language model companies (LLMs), foundational model operations companies, generative AI tooling companies, and generative AI application companies resulting in a new tech stack for the industry.
The combination of the mainstreaming an entirely new technology, a new platform war, billions in new investment, and 100's if not 1000's of start ups is driving the next revolution of the tech industry. Fast forward five years, things will be very different for consumers, businesses and enterprises.
Potential for Monumental Impact on Businesses and Enterprises
Generative AI stands to have monumental impact on businesses and enterprises. Goldman’s latest report estimates Generative AI will impact over 300 million jobs globally. We believe this is accurate if not understated. The use of generative AI will disrupt industries, change business models, and transform company operations.
There are several characteristics of generative AI that will disrupt industries and change business models. Generative AI:
Provides almost limitless immediate access to synthesized information and data
Drives content creation costs to nearly zero
Automates worker tasks leading to step function productivity improvements (e.g. information retrieval, data analysis, first draft writing, coding, testing, etc)
Provides an entirely new technology platform resulting in new channels to market and ways for businesses to serve consumers
Utilizes human like natural language and having the capacity for iterative interaction resulting in very fast user adoption
Continues to learn and evolve on an accelerated basis
The online search and commerce sector is one example of early stage industry disruption. Many consumers and workers are currently using ChatGPT as their go to source for information content retrieval and analysis. We are quickly moving from the age of search (e.g getting and clicking on links) to the age of answers. This will evolve quickly into ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms providing actions and services. Imagine your own “Assistive Bot” or “Personal Co-Pilot” that will revolutionize how you access information, manage daily tasks, make purchases, order services, and book trips. This day is coming and quickly. One result is a different paradigm for the way on-line companies acquire and serve customers. This industry change will be covered in a future Insights post where we argue that this represents one of the biggest strategic opportunities and largest threats to enterprises.
Generative AI should and will impact the strategies of many organizations. Generative AI will create new ways and channels to acquire, serve, and engage customers. It also will provide the means to dramatically increase employee capability and productivity with step function improvements in many areas. Executive teams need to think not only about how they are going to use generative AI to drive benefit for their own organizations and customers, but also how their competitors will use generative AI to out compete them in areas as broad as customer acquisition, customer service, speed of decision making, cost structure, and employee capability and retention.
Operationally, Generative AI will provide numerous benefits to enterprises, but will come with very significant challenges. Generative AI will allow enterprises to enhance worker capability, increase employee productivity, optimize supply chains, increase marketing effectiveness, and improve customer acquisition & engagement to name a few. That said, all of this means unprecedented change for organizations and workforces. Get out your change management toolkit - this will require transformation across the board in organizational structure, business processes, talent and capability, and culture.
Over the last few months, hundreds of enterprise use cases emerged spanning a broad spectrum of categories. Using our five category taxonomy, some of the most prevalent use cases are:
Category | Use Cases |
Customer Acquisition and Marketing |
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Customer Engagement and Service |
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Core Process Productivity and Effectiveness |
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Product Development and Service Delivery |
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Employee Capability and Enablement |
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Finally, enterprises must address the long-term concerns, dangers, and possible unintended consequences of generative AI. Security and privacy are a couple of these key topics, but there are numerous legal and ethical issues that enterprises will need to grapple with as well. It is critical that companies set up and think through guidelines and policies early to ensure alignment with company values and stakeholder expectations.
Key Questions Enterprise and Business Executive Teams Should Ask
Given the potential, risks, and challenges of generative AI, executives should make generative AI a key topic in their organizations and develop a full generative AI Strategy. Executives should be asking the following questions as part of a generative AI strategic process:
How should our business model change as a result of Generative AI?
How can we use Generative AI to disrupt the industry or my competitors?
How will our competitors use Generative AI to disrupt our company?
How do we use Generative AI to take advantage of the new channels and opportunities it creates to better serve my customers both in the short term and long term?
How will our competitors use Generative AI to access and better serve my customers?
Where are there opportunities to embed Generative AI in our workflows to:
Provide access to new customers
Enhance relationships, improving service, and increase engagement with current customers
Drive operational efficiency improvements
Design a better product or delivering a better service
Streamline and optimizing my supply chain
Enhance employee capability
Where are there opportunities to embed generative AI into our products
What should be our data management, security, and privacy strategies and policies to govern our use of generative AI?
What are the potential risks and ethical concerns associated with implementing generative AI with consideration to data privacy, security, and potential biases that may arise from using generative AI solutions?
Do we have the talent and skills to leverage generative AI and manage the risks; how should our organization be set up to manage generative AI implementations?
What should be our comprehensive approach related to the implementation of AI with consideration to:
Organizational structure and existing roles and responsibilities
Change management
Responsible use of AI and AI code of conduct
Alignment with company values and impacts on culture
Generative AI will transform the technology industry and provide enterprises an entirely new set of opportunities, threats, risks, and challenges. The stakes are very high. The entire success or failure of some companies will be in the balance. For others, a big portion of their enterprise value will be at risk, standing to be gained or lost. Those companies that realize this early and effectively plan and execute will be positioned to leverage the power of Generative AI in both the short and long term.
About Generative AI Solutions
Generative AI Solutions was founded to assist enterprises in leveraging the power of Generative AI. We offer consulting, prototyping & development, and Generative AI as a Service (in development) for specific use cases and applications. Please contact us at info@genaisolutions.co to start a discussion.