Generative AI usage gains traction among enterprises: McKinsey

The usage of generative AI across enterprises is already widespread, although it is still early days for the new technology, according to a report from McKinsey’s AI consulting service, Quantum Black.

The report is based on an online survey conducted in April, which received responses from 1,684 participants globally across multiple industry sectors, company sizes, and functional specialties.

Nearly 22% of the respondents said they are using generative AI for their work. This usage was highest in the technology sector, and among respondents from North America, the report showed.

Industry verticals, including financial services, retail, professional services, and healthcare were also using generative AI but trailed behind the technology sector, according to the report.

“While our estimates suggest that tech companies, unsurprisingly, are poised to see the highest impact from gen AI — adding value equivalent to as much as 9% of global industry revenue — knowledge-based industries such as banking (up to 5%), pharmaceuticals, and medical products (also up to 5%), and education (up to 4%) could experience significant effects as well,” the report said.

In contrast, manufacturing-based industries, such as aerospace, automotive, and advanced electronics could experience less disruptive effects due to limitations of the new technology’s usage in these industries as most work requires physical labor, the report said.

The findings also showed that the most commonly reported uses of generative AI are in marketing, sales, product development, and service operations.

Almost 14% of the respondents said their organization was using generative AI in the marketing and sales division, followed by 13% and 10% of the respondents saying their organizations were making use of the new AI technology across product development and service operations, respectively.

Marketing use cases of generative AI, as per the report, included crafting text documents, summarizing documents, and personalized marketing. Other functions were found to be using generative AI to identify customer needs, draft technical documents, create new product designs, and forecast trends.