Finding Value in AI
Analysts are increasingly asking whether AI is cost-effective. For marketers, AI has already demonstrated strong ROI over an extended timeframe.
Ever since the launch of ChatGPT, technology vendors have been adding as many Generative AI features as possible to their product portfolios. Meanwhile, marketers have been experimenting with the technology in search of possible use cases that can benefit the customer. The one question that few people have been asking until now, is whether the technology can deliver value for money to the business. That is beginning to change following a series of high-profile analyst reports criticising the slow adoption and poor return of AI projects.
Beyond the Hype
We're starting to see an increased disconnect between the media hype behind AI and the practical reality, which can be explained by two main problems inherent to AI in its current state. The first issue is that AI is a supporting technology rather than a fully featured end product. It is not a capability that directly improves internal efficiency or the customer experience. AI is only beneficial if consumers or businesses use it to speed up existing business processes or to unlock new customer insights. Even then, the AI model needs to be cheaper to run than the existing business process it is replacing.