ETR recently conducted its latest survey on generative AI and large language models (LLMs), focusing on budget plans, evaluation and production rates, anticipated ROI, and generative AI vendors. The survey received responses from 1,844 IT decision makers, with nearly a quarter of respondents representing Global 2000 organizations. While this article provides a brief overview of some key insights, the complete survey results and report are available on the ETR platform.
Only a fifth of respondents indicate their organizations are NOT evaluating generative AI / LLMs for business use cases, a rate that has consistently fallen each quarter. Text and data summarization and customer support are the most common business use cases for which organizations are evaluating generative AI / LLMs, with code generation and documentation and writing content and marketing copy tied for third-most common. Writing content and marketing copy has risen considerably as a use case over the past year, while imaging editing and design is the least popular use case and growing slowly. However, about a third of organizations have yet to move from evaluation to production with generative AI / LLMs. Text and data summarization, customer support, and writing content are the top business use cases for which generative AI / LLMs are now in production. Compared to last quarter, fewer respondents report production use cases of generative AI / LLMs for code generation and documentation, and customer support. Continuing evaluation is the top reason why more organizations have not moved to production with generative AI / LLMs. However, more than a third of respondents also cited data privacy or security concerns and legal, compliance, or regulatory concerns as reasons for not having moved into production.
As seen below, nearly a quarter of respondents remain unsure when they will see a return on investment (ROI) with their generative AI projects, which may signal a lack of clarity around metrics or business use cases for the technology. However, more than a quarter of respondents cited between 4 and 6 months for ROI, and 36% indicated even faster ROI.
In the ongoing Buy vs. Build debate, respondents remain roughly evenly split between using generative AI / LLMs directly from the companies developing the technologies rather than using embedded capabilities within existing vendors’ offerings. Compared to the prior quarter's survey iteration, there has been a slight increase in preference for relying directly on generative AI / LLM solutions embedded within existing vendors’ offerings, a trend that we will revisit in the upcoming July 2024 edition.
In another interesting takeaway, about half said their generative AI investments were sourced from new funds added to the budget, while 42% said funds were being reallocated from other parts of the business. As seen below, of those indicating a reallocated budget, business applications were the most common source, followed by productivity applications and non-IT departments.
ETR has been tracking enterprise GenAI trends since April 2023, and the sixth iteration of this drill-down survey is coming shortly.
If you want to see the past results of this topical survey, along with the vast breadth of data and research we offer, start your free trial today.
Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to provide actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai
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