Worried about missing the AI boom? Deutsche Bank's heavyweight report: It's just the beginning

From the emergence of generative AI to its widespread application in various industries, there is still a long way to go.

Facing the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, Deutsche Bank pointed out in a recent report that "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out) is one of the key words dominating the industry.

Companies are inundating technology firms with demands for AI products and services. Investors are flocking to chip manufacturers and software companies.

Since the support for the well-known chatbot ChatGPT began at the end of March, entrepreneurs have already connected nearly 600 plugins to it.

However, despite the enthusiasm for AI, Deutsche Bank believes that the "FOMO" phenomenon may be premature.

History tells us that new technologies such as the internet or mobile devices take several years to surpass enhancements to existing activities and transform into new use cases.

Unlike most other revolutionary technologies, Deutsche Bank points out that generative AI is currently driven by individuals, but applications on the enterprise side often require more rigorous testing. Additionally, AI faces obstacles such as ethics, regulation, and culture.

Evidence suggests that the adoption of generative AI remains relatively limited due to personnel, governance, and operational barriers. These issues will take time to address through manual monitoring, data isolation, training, and policies.

In this report, Deutsche Bank analyzes the current status and prospects of generative AI, and points out that over time, the impact of AI on human society will gradually become apparent.

Current Use of Artificial Intelligence

Deutsche Bank believes that the current use of AI is not as high as people imagine.

Last year, hardly any companies mentioned the term "artificial intelligence," but this year, it has become the favorite term in conference calls for listed companies.

In the fourth quarter of last year, companies included in the S&P 500 index mentioned "artificial intelligence" only 10 times in earnings conference calls.

In the first quarter of this year, the number increased to 159, and in the second quarter, it reached 504 times.

In comparison, European companies mentioned it even less frequently.

For companies that truly benefit from this trend, such as NVIDIA, AI is the reason for their skyrocketing stock prices.

However, unlike listed companies, Deutsche Bank's survey shows that although most European and American respondents are familiar with ChatGPT, there are not many actual application scenarios:

More than half of Europeans and Americans have heard of artificial intelligence applications. ChatGPT is the most well-known in Europe. However, less than 20% of people have actually tried chatbots.

Although more Europeans have heard of ChatGPT, Americans are more actively using artificial intelligence in their work. So far, the three most popular scenarios for AI applications are at home, although a significant number of people also use Bing AI at work.

So far, customer service remains the most widely used area for AI:

Service operations are the primary function for using artificial intelligence, with consumer goods/retail leading the way. In a recent survey, nearly one-third of respondents were using AI. AI for product and service development is dominated by the financial services industry, accounting for 31%.

A recent study targeting 5,179 customer service representatives found that AI-based conversational assistants helped improve their work efficiency, especially for new employees. AI also helped improve metrics such as work efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Where are the opportunities in the industry?

Since the widespread application of generative artificial intelligence has not yet been realized, various industries are facing opportunities and challenges.

Deutsche Bank believes that for a wide range of industries, the most likely applications of artificial intelligence will focus on the following three areas: data analysis, content creation and editing, and customer service and support.

Data analysis: Accounting firms can use AI for financial analysis and evaluating company growth potential (especially in M&A transactions); consulting firms can use ChatGPT to analyze unstructured data and generate business insights; media companies can use AI to analyze social media information and public sentiment, and verify user-generated content.

Content creation: Advertising agencies can use artificial intelligence to create advertising campaigns and develop personalized ads; game companies can use generative AI to enrich NPC personalities, behaviors, and dialogues;

Video production companies can use generative AI to create personalized scripts.

Customer service and support: The restaurant industry can use generative AI chatbots to greet guests and take orders; online shopping platforms can use generative AI to provide purchasing advice to customers; social platforms can use AI to answer customer questions and detect fraudulent activities on the platform.

In addition, given that users currently can only access more applications of generative AI through third-party plugins and embedded generative AI search engines, Deutsche Bank believes that this represents the three major development themes of AI in the future:

The rise of fully integrated AI software, such as Microsoft 365 CoPilot: AI integrated software is still not widely used to a large extent, but it can generally work across different daily applications and connect to business data in a secure, private, and compatible manner to obtain content and context.

Enhanced search engines: Rapidly emerging third-party plugins provide functionalities similar to enhanced search, including real-time information, integrated booking and purchasing, and the ability to search PDF documents and websites through links; search engines earn advertising revenue by directing traffic to third-party websites.

AI personal assistants: In the future, users may access products and services through applications embedded in chatbot personal assistants or through chatbots embedded in applications.

What will happen next? Where will the investment focus be in artificial intelligence?

Based on the above application directions, Deutsche Bank points out that in the future, investments in artificial intelligence may focus on healthcare, data, and fintech.

Global private investment in artificial intelligence peaked at $125 billion in 2021 and is expected to decline to $92 billion by 2022. Investments in healthcare, data, and fintech dominate.

Leading indicators such as patents and corporate documents indicate that new applications of artificial intelligence, such as natural language processing, computer vision, and generative audio, are expected to experience a surge.

Although generative AI currently plays a supporting role and has not yet had a significant impact on more industries, Deutsche Bank believes that innovations related to generative AI will disrupt business models when the time is right.

Finally, Deutsche Bank pointed out that the future application of artificial intelligence may be multimodal, involving "hyper-personalized" content and services, with the ultimate goal of achieving "superintelligence".