Business leaders believe AI can deliver a competitive advantage

No fewer than 89% of B2B and B2C directors and above believe that ethical use of AI can deliver a competitive business advantage. That’s the takeaway from the new “State of Personalization 2024” report from Twilio Segment.

A similarly large portion, 86%, expects artificial intelligence to support a shift from reactive to predictive personalization. The full report, based on a survey of over 500 business leaders representing companies with over 500 employees in 12 countries can be found here (registration required).

Why we care. Of course Twilio Segment is a CDP and has skin in the personalization game. But the question the report inadvertently raises and does not fully answer is how a technology that is foreseen to be very widely (if not universally) adopted will ultimately provide a competitive advantage. The simple answer might be that some brands will use it well and some will use it badly. It can be predicted that some will fail, likely inadvertently, to use it ethically.

The question is particularly relevant to the case of generative AI. How long will it be before everybody has AI assistants of AI chatbots and the opportunity for customers to get product information or recommendations using natural language prompts? Brands that don’t have those capabilities will certainly struggle, but for the rest, genAI will surely create a level playing field not a competitive advantage.

Dig deeper: AI is a game changer, but not generative AI

Other takeaways. Here are some of the other data-points from the report:

• 73% of business leaders believe that AI will change personalization strategies.
• 58% of business leaders believe that AI chatbots will have the most impact on personalization over the next 5 years.
• 59% of businessesexpect their teams to be using AI daily by 2025.
• 72% of companies are using a CDP for personalization while 48% are using a data warehouse.