Over a third of businesses are now using AI

Almost a third of business now say they use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in one form or the other, new figures have claimed.

A report from IBM found that although AI adoption itself was flat over the last year, businesses plan to make “significant investments” throughout 2021, with another third sharing their desire to invest in AI skills and solutions over the next 12 months.

Natural language processing (NLP) emerged as the type of AI that appeals the most to organizations that want to automate processes. Almost half of businesses claim to use NLP-powered apps and a quarter plan to use the technology over the course of 2021. 

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Customer service emerged as the top use case for NLP, with a majority of the respondents claiming to have either deployed it already or are considering deployment.

Another key takeaway from the survey was that almost half (43%) of the respondents credited the pandemic for accelerating their adoption of AI.

AI everywhere

It’s important to note that IBMs new CEO Arvind Krishna has been aggressively pushing the company to beef up its arsenal of hybrid cloud and AI-powered solutions. 

The company has already made eleven significant AI-related acquisitions since Krishna’s arrival last year.

In fact, the company unveiled new AI-driven capabilities across its portfolio of enterprise products during its IBM Think conference.

This includes Mono2Micro, which leverages AI to streamline cloud app migrations in WebSphere, and Watson Orchestrate, which uses AI to automate tasks in several Salesforce and SAP tools. 

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Via VentureBeat