Enterprise AI Is Here. Is Your Team Ready?
Enterprise AI Is Here. Is Your Team Ready?
Recent weeks have seen an explosion of sophisticated, AI-powered tools that aid in productivity and creativity, an evolution that continues at an overwhelming pace. Blink and you may risk missing out on a key innovation that can give your team superpowers—and with everything moving so fast, it can be difficult to know where to begin investing in these tools. To help brands gain their bearings, we've released a quick guide outlining the actions to take now to unlock AI’s benefits.
And while various point solutions and startups have hopped onto the scene, a growing collection of enterprise solutions is offering newly accessible ways for teams to boost productivity—all within platforms they already use and trust. The generative-AI-scrawled writing on the wall is clear: there’s no better time than now to begin upskilling teams in artificial intelligence.
The rise of enterprise AI is upon us.
Enterprise AI can be divided into three categories: martech, of which many marketers are already familiar in the data and media space; general productivity and collaboration tools; and tools aiding in creativity. Let’s look at high-profile examples from the latter two categories that have only recently been revealed.
On March 14, Google announced its plans to add generative AI features to the Google Workspace suite, with Docs and Gmail being the first platforms that will make use of the new tools. This isn’t Google’s first foray into applying artificial intelligence to work; Smart Reply and Smart Compose were introduced in 2015 and 2019, respectively, to streamline email communication by recommending contextually relevance responses or auto-completing lines as they’re written in real time.
Just a week after that announcement, Google opened up the waitlist for Bard, its chatbot alternative to ChatGPT. Unlike Workspace, Bard cannot be used with a corporate account; users must be logged into a Google account that they wholly control. Still, the application for business is significant, with Google suggesting use cases like generating blog post outlines or snappy taglines.
Just days after the Google Workspace reveal, Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot to the world on March 16. Similar to Google’s offering, Copilot applies natural language to unlock productivity, like translating a product spec sheet into a drafted product announcement in seconds. A key feature behind Copilot is Business Chat, which works across a user’s data to surface up information and insights that are needed at a given moment. These moves come after a potential $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other AI innovations, following previous investments in 2019 and 2021.
Getting creative with AI.
Like the enterprise tools mentioned above, Adobe Creative Suite is no stranger to AI; Sensei, a feature uses AI and machine learning to help users quickly make key edits to photography and design, launched in 2016.
Now, Adobe is launching Firefly, a family of generative AI models to assist in visual creation of all kinds, including still imagery, video content and 3D models. Examples include adding context-aware elements to an image you’re already working on—like speaking a castle into existence within a drawing of a beautiful landscape—or generating a whole image or design based on a sketch or a few words.
What’s interesting about Adobe Firefly is that it’s trained on images from Adobe Stock and works that are either in public domain or open license, avoiding the challenges of rights and ownership that affect models trained from content sourced across the internet.
Embrace experimentation to build AI maturity.
The rise of enterprise-ready AI is a turning point of the technology, which is now becoming even more accessible for employees looking to supercharge their productivity and creativity. But simply adopting a new technology isn’t a silver bullet that will help people work better with the click of the mouse.
Consider the paradox of choice: this phenomenon explains how when presented with more options, people expend more energy to make the right choice. Everyone has felt the paralyzing dread of a blank page waiting to be filled, and opaque platforms that rely on natural language can easily overwhelm, particularly for employees who aren’t used to issuing directives. To make the most out of these tools, then, brands will need to upskill their teams to better understand their potential and how to act on it.
Automation and AI will be as ubiquitous as the mouse and keyboard. We’re preparing our people by giving them access to tooling, technical teams, training, and celebrating wins to help automate across the board.
Our team has been eager to embrace these tools to experiment and share that knowledge with our partners. Following a successful AI hackathon last winter to kickstart that maker’s attitude, Jam3 hosted another AI hackathon in March across its global offices, with the goal of answering the question: how can (and should) creatives in our industry use AI-powered tools? Challenged to build a brand strategy and product offering for a fictional fashion and beauty brand, each team employed AI as a sparring partner to gain an unconventional creative perspective and accelerate results. AI had to be used as a tool to generate ideas, insights, visuals, scripts and code—ultimately resulting in a campaign to launch the fictional brand and a storyboard and prototype to bring it to life. These events go a long way in helping employees envision the role that AI can play in achieving their everyday responsibilities.
Don’t wait to get started.
We’re only in the beginning of the AI-augmented workplace, but these tools and platforms are becoming increasingly sophisticated each day—meaning if you haven’t embraced AI on your team yet, you’re already falling behind.
That’s why we put together a quick, single-page guide mapping out areas where brands can begin building their AI maturity right now, while also gearing toward future goals as technology continues to improve. Whether you’re looking to do more with less, personalize marketing on a grander scale, or something else altogether, find out how to get started with our quick guide.
