Gartner forecasts payback from office AI in circa two years

Mainstream adoption of AI in the office and among employees remains around two years off, according to analysis from consultancy Gartner.

So-called “everyday AI” is at the peak of inflated expectations in the view of the global research biz, yet actual benefits in terms of productivity may not be realized for some time.

Adam Preset, VP analyst at Gartner, said everyday AI technology aims to help employees work faster and more confidently.

“It supports a new way of working, where intelligent software is acting as more of a collaborator than a tool. The digital workplace is now entering the era of everyday AI,” he claimed.

Vendors, according to Gartner, would seek to market products beyond AI enhancements to the familiar office applications, including tools to help workers find and condense relevant information and answer questions more comprehensively.

“Everyday AI will become more sophisticated, moving from services that, for example, can sort and summarise chats and email messages to services that can write a report with minimal guidance,” said Preset. “In many ways, everyday AI is the future of workforce productivity.”

While everyday AI is most hyped in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, digital employee experience (DEX) sits within the “trough of disillusionment” as interest is waning owing to experiments and implementations that have failed to deliver.

However, Gartner claims that DEX and everyday AI are linked, and will work in tandem — eventually.

“Most of the transformative innovations maturing in two to five years directly support the idea of an ever-improving digital employee experience… Workstyle analytics suggests we need a clear focus on curating the analytics required to optimize the combination of technology, talent and business outcomes facilitated by the digital workplace,” the report says.

Asking users to wait for returns on office worker AI investments is in line with a recent approach from software giant Microsoft. Despite promoting its injection of Copilot into a range of products, in March it asked investors to "temper" expectations for quick financial returns from the technology as it tries to convince customers to pay "substantial" sums for it each month.

After trialing the use of Microsoft's GenAI in their workflow, testers concluded they had mixed feelings about it, saying it was useful but maybe didn't yet justify the price tag.

The reluctance has not stopped vendors from promoting their own commissioned research which indicates that AI can offer rapid returns.

"Our research shows that early adopters of gen AI are reaping significant rewards from increased revenue, to better customer service, to improved productivity," said Oliver Parker, VP of global gen AI go-to-market at Google Cloud, referring to a study published earlier this month.

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Meanwhile, investors have pointed out that, for the sake of the US tech economy, there better be some air left in the AI bubble.

S&P Global found that a small number of very large companies exposed to cloud and AI are doing much better than the industry average. At the same time, companies in mature markets, such as PC and smartphone makers and sectors undergoing inventory corrections (think industrial, automotive, and networking equipment) are underperforming the average.

"Cloud giants are heavily investing in AI despite uncertain monetization timelines, with combined capital spending for Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta up 60 percent year over year," S&P Global ratings technology director Christian Frank said in a statement. ®