“’What we are seeing is actually quite an uptake,’ says White, who says interest in AI is at the research rather than the production stage. Around half of companies (49%) are piloting or conducting a small-scale implementation of AI, and a third are exploring generative AI. ‘And that’s exactly what we saw when cloud started to really take off,’ says White, comparing the rise of AI to the initial move to the cloud over a decade ago. ‘It was, ‘let’s dip our toe in the water, let’s understand what all the implications are for policies, for data, for privacy, and for training,’ she says. ‘Businesses were creating their own use cases by doing small but meaningful pilots. That’s what happened last time, and I’m not surprised that’s what’s happening this time.’”