If 2023 was the year companies poured money into productive AI, 2024 is the year they hope those investments start paying off. From Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) to Samsung and even Volkswagen and Mercedes, businesses are quickly starting to cash in on their generative AI offerings as interest in the technology remains hot among consumers and enterprise customers.
“We expect 2024 to be a year of increased promotion and early adoption, and 2025-27 to be a year where markets can leverage more applications to leverage features that combine many key elements,” analysts from UBS’ Global Research and Evidence said. Lab wrote in an investor note Monday.
Samsung on Wednesday launched its Galaxy S24 series of smartphones, complete with the company’s Galaxy AI suite of generative AI capabilities, including live translation and photo editing features. On Monday, Microsoft announced that it would start selling subscriptions for the consumer version of its Copilot AI assistant for $20 per user per month.
The tech giant also said it will open the enterprise version of Copilot for Microsoft 365 to small and medium-sized businesses. It previously only sold the service to businesses with more than 300 employees.
Intel (INTC), Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), and Qualcomm (QCOM) sell chips with their own neural processing units for AI applications; PC manufacturers are joining the fray by marketing their laptops and desktops as AI-ready; At CES 2024, Volkswagen said it would bring ChatGPT to its in-car voice assistant in the middle of the year.
Now companies only need to get support from consumers.
“Is there a lethal application? Is there a demonstrable practice or change that will actually make people pay more? I think it’s something [companies] Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal told Yahoo Finance:
But that doesn’t stop businesses from taking risks on what the next big technological leap could be.
It’s time to give up
If you followed developments at CES 2024 earlier this month, you know that seemingly every tech-savvy company in the world is using AI to market their products.
Now it’s up to companies producing real AI products to deliver on the promise that technology will truly change our lives for the better.
The problem for companies, Atwal says, is that generative AI products offer cumulative benefits to consumers, rather than a single mind-blowing application that’s easy to sell to people.
“This is a combination of elements that will make the device easier to use. This will make you more productive. “So everything kind of becomes cumulative,” he said. “It is very, very difficult to make money from cumulative.”
While it may be difficult to sell productive AI products to the average consumer, enterprise customers are already in the game.
According to Microsoft Vice President and Consumer Marketing Manager Yusuf Mehdi, 77% of people in organizations using the company’s Copilot business software say they would never want to give it up. Microsoft’s Copilot for Microsoft 365 currently costs $30 per user per month; That’s the same price as Google’s own enterprise offering, Duet AI for Workspace Enterprise.
Microsoft’s Copilot Pro will test consumers’ appetite for paid productive AI services. So will AI PC, the PC industry’s marketing name for laptops and desktops equipped with neural processing units designed to power artificial intelligence applications.
So far, chipmakers like Intel say their neural processors will benefit the average consumer by running productive AI applications on their personal devices rather than in the cloud, helping improve overall privacy and security.
But beyond that, they say, we’ll have to wait to see what kinds of applications developers are cooking up before we know what AI computers can really do.
According to UBS’s Global Research and Evidence Laboratory, it’s only a matter of time before consumers get on board.
“Motivations, usage scenarios and technology possibilities, [generative AI] Edge devices are poised for initial high-level adoption in 2024 and mainstream penetration from 2025-27, UBS analysts wrote in a research paper.
“This has the potential to encourage positive mix changes [spending on higher priced products] (increasing requirements for more processing, storage, and upgraded peripherals) and may also drive replacement cycles as new devices offer greater usability, enabling content creation, productivity, and personalization.”
It’s now up to tech companies to get customers interested in the benefits of generative AI if they hope to see a return on their investment.
Daniel Howley He is the technology editor of Yahoo Finance. He has been interested in the technology sector since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter. @DanielHowley.
Click for the latest technology news that will affect the stock market.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance