Most companies are using or plan to embrace the implementation of AI in their business to improve productivity and turnover, a new study reveals. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Many large South African companies are already leveraging, or intend to start using, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), such as ChatGpt, to boost productivity, competitiveness and overall business performance.
This was the finding of the South African Generative AI Roadmap 2024, a new study published by independent technology research firm World Wide Worx, Dell Technologies and Intel.
The survey found that 90% of respondents currently use, or have concrete plans to integrate, GenAI within their organisations. It was based on 100 interviews with decision-makers at large enterprises, at least half employing more than 1 000 staff and 10% with at least 5 000 employees.
“Ninety percent of SA enterprises are on the AI journey; they are either not using it, but plan to use it, or they are using it in one form or another. A quarter of respondents say AI is being used unofficially (shadow AI) in the organisation, in other words, it is not officially approved or budgeted for,” said World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck.
“They are tolerating the use of shadow AI because, while they may not want to embark on it formally, they see the importance of their staff trying out the various tools.”
Goldstuck said the fact that only 10% of companies had no plan to use GenAI was an incredibly low indicator since the technology had “only exploded in the public consciousness” at the end of 2022.
More than half of companies were only dabbling in publicly available GenAI tools, such as ChatGpt, while 13.3% use public services regularly and 13.3% use more advanced services in the public cloud.
Most companies, 33.3%, use GenAI to produce written content, while 27.8% use it to create videos and 23.3% for audio content, followed by 23.3% for images, 21.1% for chatbots, 11.1% for neural network creation and 7.8% for engineering design.
Goldstuck said topping the list of companies’ planned use of GenAI was chatbots, followed by text creation, code generation and video and image creation.
He said it was not surprising that ChatGpt was the number one platform used by 93.9% of companies as it had spearheaded the local revolution in GenAI. Other popular platforms in use were its paid platform GPT4, Microsoft Copilot/Bing AI, Google Gemini/Bard, Scribe, Github Copilot, Duet AI, Cohere Generate and Dall-E2.
A critical question is the impact of AI on the company.
“Productivity” leaps out as two-thirds of companies say it has a ‘very positive’ impact, almost all the rest say it has a ‘positive’ impact and a tiny portion say it is ‘neutral’. No one says it has a negative impact on productivity,” he said.
“So, here you truly see how GenAI is already transforming the ability of companies to become more productive, and by extension, more competitive. More than 70% of companies say it has a ‘very positive’ impact on competitiveness and another 29% said it has a ‘positive’ (impact on competitiveness).”
Goldstuck said more than 70% of companies reported it had a “positive” effect on turnover, while almost one-third said it had a “very positive” effect on turnover.
“It is a voyage of discovery — people are still trying to find their way on this roadmap, but two-thirds say product research, market research and marketing content are significant as well.
“People are finding them to be useful tools but bear in mind that most GenAI still “hallucinates”, in other words it makes up facts, but more than half of people, despite that, still find it useful for research and content,” he said.
By order of preference, the overall uses for AI include product research (67%), market research (54%), marketing content (53%), data analysis (36%), report writing (32%), social media content (29%), website content (26%), email content (23%) and training material (19%).
GenAI is still “embarrassingly bad” at editing content such as emails, Goldstuck said, and
its usefulness lags when it comes to internal processes specific to human capital and resources as only 11% said it had a “very positive” effect on human resources processes, while 2.2% said it had a “very positive” effect on staff retention.
Companies need to budget for the use of GenAI and instil a culture for it among employees.
“You can’t be blind and go into AI — you have to have a strategy and a purpose and you have to have security to defend your systems when you go into the AI world,” he said.
“My conclusion from these research findings is that it is no longer futuristic. It’s a reality for South African enterprises. They’ve embraced it and you can see that they see it as a catalyst for innovation and growth,” Goldstuck said.
Dell Technologies chief technology officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Mark O’Regan, said as many as 24% of respondents were using shadow IT and 11% were using it officially.
“Using AI officially can only scale — that trend is going to start going upward and it’s aligning with what we’re seeing in the industry … It’s exciting that the future is here. And anyone can use generative AI but that’s not to say that it’s an easy and simple technology,” he said.
“We’ve invested a little above $7.5 billion just in research and development of AI and nascent technologies, which we believe is a critical element to our commitment and our go to market.”
Dell Technologies South Africa general manager Doug Woolley said the roadmap was a call to action for businesses to embrace the “revolutionary wave of innovation”.
“Those who fail to adapt risk being left behind in an increasingly AI-driven economy … With a focus on strategic implementation and harnessing the power of AI, South African companies are poised to unlock significant productivity gains and secure a competitive edge in the global marketplace,” he said.
The key to maximising “the promise of AI” is to remember that its effectiveness hinges on the quality and relevance of the data it processes, Woolley said.
“By automating repetitive tasks, optimising workflows, improving decision-making with data-driven insights and enhancing customer experiences through personalisation, AI has the potential to drive innovation, unlock new opportunities and contribute to long-term growth.”