Gen AI yet to influence IT spending, but CIOs should plan ahead, says Gartner

While the hype around generative artificial intelligence (AI) is substantial, enterprise IT spending so far has not been impacted by it, according to research firm Gartner, which also said that CIO/CTOs should continue to plan ahead for this technology as it would  "potentially benefit early adopters".

“While all eyes are on AI right now, CIOs and CTOs must also turn their attention to other emerging technologies with transformational potential,” said Melissa Davis, VP Analyst at Gartner. “This includes technologies that are enhancing developer experience, driving innovation through the pervasive cloud and delivering human-centric security and privacy.”

In a report published on Wednesday, the research firm said it has positioned generative AI on the ‘peak of inflated expectations’, which is projected to reach transformational benefit in the next 2-5 years. 

“The popularity of many new AI techniques will have a profound impact on business and society,” said Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “The massive pre-training and scale of AI foundation models, viral adoption of conversational agents and the proliferation of generative AI applications are heralding a new wave of workforce productivity and machine creativity.”

With the technology is still at an early stage, there is greater uncertainty about how it will evolve. Such embryonic technologies present greater risks for deployment, but potentially greater benefits for early adopters, Davis said.

Meanwhile, a report by the research firm published in July said that the worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.7 trillion in 2023, an increase of 4.3% from 2022. The report also affirmed that while generative AI is top of mind for many business and IT leaders, it is not yet significantly impacting IT spending levels. 

From the time of its launch in November last year, ChatGPT has become the hottest technology tool. In just two months, the tool had over 100 million users. OpenAI launched a paid subscription-based model called ChatGPT Plus that runs on the newly launched large multimodal model GPT-4. Many companies like Google, Baidu, Salesforce, and others have launched their smart chatbots with capabilities similar to that of ChatGPT. In recent weeks, CTO/CIOs from many non-technology firms are also showing a lot of enthusiasm in getting into the generative AI bandwagon.

This, despite a report on Mint published on 27 February, said that companies are wary of deploying tools such as ChatGPT, with concerns including factors such as hallucination of data, potentially inaccurate and misleading information, and no safeguards on retrieval or deletion of sensitive corporate data.

That said, most enterprises will incorporate generative AI in a slow and controlled manner through upgrades to tools that are already built into IT budgets. As Gartner sees, in the longer-term, generative AI will primarily be incorporated into enterprises through existing spending.