From Labs to Leaders: 2024’s Generative AI Predictions for Industry Champions

In the past year, we have witnessed the explosive emergence of generative AI (GenAI) use cases. Its potential to revolutionize how businesses analyze, create, and compete is undeniable, but beyond the hype, a critical question hangs in the air: How will industries move forward with GenAI in 2024? This blog post explores five key predictions that paint a picture of a year defined by strategic battles, cautious optimism, and a race to harness the true potential of AI. 

1. GenAI will cause a clash between executives as they vie for control over its agenda within the enterprise.

Nearly half of executives report that their AI investments will increase next year to jump on the generative AI bandwagon, while 70% are already in generative AI exploration mode. Now that organizations are ramping up AI adoption in the enterprise, every executive wants to be the one to take their company on its AI journey. In 2024, the AI agenda will become increasingly complex as more players join the struggle for control, from the CTO to the CIO to data analytics executives. The C-Suite will need to identify where their opportunities for AI lie and what conversation they must have with different departments to decide who should be the one to take the lead. In the meantime, CIOs are facing pressure from CEOs to expand their use of generative AI. In 2024, we will see CIOs continuing to push forward their exploratory AI experiments and projects as the battle continues.  

2. Dashboards will finally deliver on their hype, but only with the effective use of GenAI to identify insightful analytics.

The rise of GenAI has sparked debates about the relevance of dashboards, with some predicting their demise. However, this view neglects the fundamental strength of dashboards in providing a basic yet clear and shared overview of business performance. Historically, their misuse of detailed analytics – attempting to answer complex questions like “Why is this number down?” – led to confusion rather than clarity. 

In 2024, dashboards will still have a place in the enterprise as a valuable tool, but organizations will finally accept their limitations. GenAI-powered analytics agents will enable a pivotal shift. These agents are capable of advanced data analysis, a role for which dashboards were never suited. They can uncover underlying trends and insights, allowing dashboards to return to their original purpose: offering a clear, unified view of the business’s current state. This evolution will present a more streamlined approach to business intelligence. Dashboards will maintain a focus on overall business health, while GenAI agents will delve into the complexities, extracting actionable insights. This synergy will optimize the use of both tools, ensuring comprehensive yet clear business analysis and decision-making. 

3. The AI community will begin to rally around open AI, beginning its path toward parity with closed AI.

Closed AI has a significant lead over open AI at the moment, with the former offering polished, enterprise-ready experience while the latter is still rough around the edges. However, next year we’ll see open AI begin to support compelling use cases and apps, which will demonstrate the potential of open AI. This will lead to increasing interest in the technology from the wider community, leading to growing adoption and more contributions to open AI. 

4. “Me too” AI vendors will sink as GenAI hits a trough of disillusionment.

Right now, generative AI is at the peak of its hype cycle. Next year, some organizations will become disillusioned when their AI investments don’t provide the transformation they’re expecting. Customers will grow wary of vendors that are late to the AI race, tacking on AI capabilities that provide little business value or compelling functionality. But organizations that use generative AI correctly – supporting proven use cases – can avoid this disillusionment and see the expected value from AI. 

5. The future of AI is verticalized.

From ChatGPT to Bard, we saw our fair share of general-purpose AI tools come to light this year. In 2024, we can expect to see a new wave of AI technology that will be tailored to each industry and individual profession. Almost every role, from doctors to bankers to marketers, will have its own verticalized generative AI assistant. We will also see tools specialized in every industry like retail and pharmaceutical. Some of these tools will be designed for both – marketers within the pharmaceutical industry, for instance. As opposed to the mainstream conversational AI tools many businesses are using today, tailored AI technologies will be more well-versed in each domain. Both organizations and their employees will be able to obtain reliable and deeper insights to become more productive and strategic than ever before. 

Stepping into 2024, it is up to key leaders in every industry to step up and help shape the future of AI. 2024 will require companies to tailor the power of GenAI to specific industry needs, and become a co-creator, not just a consumer, of its impact.