Generative AI is no longer just an experiment. For many organizations, it’s part of everyday operations. 2024 saw notable progress in organizations’ generative AI adoption, according to Enterprise Strategy Group’s recent survey of over 800 IT and business decision-makers across industries and business sizes. Especially in areas like software development and IT operations, organizations are finding that generative AI tools can increase productivity, improve efficiency and automate workflows. This year’s report builds on ESG’s previous research into the generative AI market. Compared with the 2023 survey, the 2024 data shows several new trends: More organizations are moving generative AI into production, early generative AI use cases are emerging, and there’s a clear emphasis on productivity and efficiency — but additional challenges are surfacing, too.Generative AI adoption has come far in the past year. In 2023, most organizations were just getting started with the technology. Only 18% had deployed generative AI in production, while 24% were engaged in pilot projects. This year, almost all respondents (92%) said generative AI use in their organization had increased over the previous 12 months. Nearly a third of businesses are now running generative AI in production, and the share with mature generative AI initiatives has doubled, from 4% to 8%. Of course, generative AI isn’t as universal as the hype sometimes might imply. If 30% of businesses are running generative AI in production, that means 70% aren’t there yet — and “production” can mean different things to different organizations. Still, the acceleration in generative AI deployment is noteworthy, given the sometimes-glacial pace of enterprise IT innovation. For many businesses, the question seems to be not whether to integrate generative AI, but how quickly they can roll it out.

Full survey : Nearly a third of organizations are now using generative AI in production. But data quality, the AI skills gap and an evolving regulatory landscape continue to present hurdles.