Exploring Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Business Leaders

There is a well-founded hype around generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Research in 2023 suggests that almost 70% of senior Information Technology (IT) leaders list it as a business priority over the next 18 months. GenAI describes algorithms (such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s CoPilot and Google’s Bard) that can be used to create new audio, code, images, text or video content. While the development and deployment of GenAI is largely a digital IT task, where and how to use it is a business task, with far-reaching strategic, risk, process and people implications.

Though it might seem counterintuitive, business leaders should start with an assessment of what they do and how they do it before they introduce new GenAI technology to avoid being part of the 70% of businesses that fail to deliver digital transformation. This article aims to assist business leaders in establishing GenAI guardrails and policy, encouraging the identification of GenAI business use cases and examining people, process and change implications before introducing GenAI.