12 AI trends and forecasts for 2024

In January, the International Monetary Fund (IMD) presented a new analysis that predicts that AI will transform as much as 40% of all employment, of which 60% in advanced economies. At the same time, another survey reveals expectations that AI will reduce the number of jobs by at least 5 %, especially in the areas of automated work.

Thus, due to the need of companies to navigate in a complex AI environment, two changes are already reflected in the field of employment noticeable trend:

• Emergence of new positions, which we did not know until now, such as: Chief AI Officer, AI product manager, AI engineer, AI regulatory specialist, AI Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) designer, etc.
• AI upskilling is the upgrading of existing professions, which includes teaching individuals about AI technology, with the aim of acquiring new skills, improving work performance and creating an advantage on the labor market.

Experts predict that by 2026 as much as 80% of companies will already be using AI technologies for their daily operations. This trend indicates decentralization AI, where companies will adapt technologies to their needs, mainly in the form of open source solutions. This may mean that soon every major company will have its own AI system. 

The second branch of this trend indicates the implementation of AI tools by employees (utilization is expected by 60 % of employees according to research), which will in turn lead to the development of the so-called Bring Your Own AI. In practice, this means that most individuals will have their own AI assistant, which will be adapted specifically to their needs and tasks.

As the use of AI increases, risk and security management becomes critical. That is why TRiSM "AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management" approaches are already being introduced, which will help organizations manage risks during the development or implementation of AI models. This framework abroad already represents a kind of benchmark for AI security, which will expand even more in the year 2024.

We can expect even more high-profile lawsuits in the field of the use of copyright and intellectual rights and the moral and ethical responsibility of using AI technologies in the future. Therefore, the development of new legislative and regulatory frameworks for the management and control of AI is becoming increasingly necessary and will be crucial in the coming years. The introduction of the first legislation on artificial intelligence by the European Union has already been announced, and in November 2023 the first global summit on the topic of artificial intelligence was organized, where security and risks AI were discussed by representatives of governments, AI companies and civil society.

Despite the fact that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are extremely powerful, there are still so-called hallucinations - incorrect results that occur regardless of how good the instructions or We prepare "prompts" for them. These hallucinations create the need for special insurance coverages, which are currently still in the early stages of development, but experts predict that “hallucination insurance” will become a big money maker in 2024.

By the year 2028, when many predict the arrival of a major transformation of the software industry, already 75% of programmers employed in various companies are expected to use their own AI assistant when writing code. 

The market for quantum artificial intelligence (the integration of quantum computing and AI) was projected to reach as much as $1.8 billion by 2030. Although these forecasts are not directly related to marketing, the field's advances make it a noteworthy trend. The greatest progress is expected in financial modeling and risk assessment, the development of new medicines, and progress toward artificial general intelligence capable of more complex human tasks.

The increasing use of AI tools predicts an increased number of very narrowly focused AI models, which will lead to the penetration of artificial intelligence into a wide variety of small industries. Such tools and applications will be based on the use of AI agents acting in the roles of very specific assistants or experts in narrow areas.

Using AI technologies to improve user experience is already a priority of 58% of marketers according to research, even though currently only 5% of applications use AI specifically for these purposes. But by the year 2026, this number is predicted to rise to more than two-thirds of all new applications. Not surprising, given that personalization powered by AI is already showing outstanding results, especially in conversion rates and user engagement.

At the same time, AI voice search is also developing rapidly. Already last year, as many as 41% of US adults used voice search on a daily basis, and almost 37% of them use voice assistants. This presents a major challenge for merchants, as they must also adapt their services, descriptions and SEO to the growing voice search.

AI technologies can be used very effectively for marketing purposes, and we will monitor further accelerated development and innovation especially in the areas of advanced ad targeting, marketing automation, more powerful chatbots, creation of richer and more accurate content, analysis of market data for more effective marketing and in other areas.

The last trend in the trend collection remains an unwritten space. Let's call it a temporary "placeholder" as a reminder not to forget about all those AI innovations that we can't even imagine at the moment, because maybe our imaginations don't even reach that far... 

Maybe now it's easier to understand why the biggest in the field AI is yet to come. Technology promises us more and more and predicts taking a major role in the transformation of digital environments as we know them. Understanding and responding to new trends will be crucial for companies that want to stay competitive and take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings.

In the agency ENKI, since the emergence of Chat-GPT, we have been monitoring trends in the field of AI on a daily basis, which we have successfully implemented in our work processes, and we are planning even greater optimization. With this, employees save time in performing daily tasks and devote more of it to creative ideation and other tasks for which we often ran out of time before.

Artificial intelligence also helped me in writing this article. Since ChatGPT and I co-created as coordinated collaborators, I was able to prepare the article significantly faster, as he was able to carry out quality research with my help, and I refined his findings and combined them with my own. Together, we then created an article precisely on the topic of our work relationship: AI and marketing, hand in hand. Or with the keyboard in the palm of your hand.