Dive Brief:

• Seventy-eight percent of business leaders responding to a recent KPMG survey said they were “confident” that planned investments in generative artificial intelligence will produce returns such as revenue growth or cost savings over the next one to three years.
• The Big Four accounting firm’s study also revealed that generative AI is already having a significant impact on many businesses. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed said the technology is being leveraged in their organization’s decision making, 52% said it’s shaping competitive positioning, and 47% said it’s opening new revenue opportunities, according to a report on the findings.
• Generative AI is “a game-changer, and business executives expect to see the payoff in the next three years as they scale its use in their organization to gain a competitive edge and grow their business,” Carl Carande, vice chair of advisory at KPMG, said in a press release.

Dive Insight:

Wall Street is increasingly watching to see if AI investments are paying off, particularly in the case of big tech companies like Microsoft and Alphabet, which are betting heavily on the technology.

In KPMG’s survey, more than 80% of respondents said they believe that generative AI investments will increase over the next three years.

But companies aren’t just spending frivolously, according to Per Edin, KPMG’s AI go-to-market leader.

“Increasingly, they are moving from experimenting with the technology to really starting to put expectations on it,” he said in an interview.

A high percentage of business leaders are bullish about realizing returns from generative AI investments — despite the fact that it’s still a nascent technology — partly because many of them have personally felt the benefit of using popular tools like ChatGPT, Edin said.

Also, many early AI deployments by companies have produced promising results, giving executives confidence to go after bigger projects, he said.

The KPMG report is based on a June 21-July 12 poll of 225 C-suite and senior business leaders representing organizations with an annual revenue of $1 billion or more.

A Deloitte survey of CFOs released earlier this year offered a more mixed view of generative AI. Thirty percent of those respondents indicated either uncertainty about the appropriate metrics to use for gauging the value of their investment in the technology, or a lack of current measurements. Those responding to a question about top barriers to generative AI deployment within the finance function in particular cited technical skill gaps, adoption risks, and culture and trust issues, among other concerns.