Beaming’s study, which was conducted by researchers at Opinium, reveals that the proportion of large companies using products such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant to help with tasks such as dictation, information gathering and calendar management is expected to more double in 2019, rising from 18% of the large business population to 39% by the end of the year.
Beaming expects the number of large companies using A.I. assistants to overtake the 32% of similarly sized businesses that employ human PAs and secretaries in August 2019.
The study reveals that the use of A.I. assistants will increase among all sizes of business in 2019, expanding from 17% to 27% of medium-sized companies and from 6% to 13% of small firms. Given this current rate of adoption, Beaming predicts that the employment of A.I. assistants will overtake human PAs and secretaries in medium-sized companies by the end of 2020 and at small firms in 2021.
Across all business sizes, A.I. assistants are already more common than their human counterparts in companies run by younger business leaders. Beaming's research indicates that they will be as prevalent as PAs and secretaries in companies run by 35-54 years old leaders by the end of 2019.
Sonia Blizzard, managing director at Beaming, comments: "Businesses of all sizes are undergoing a significant period of digital transformation, doing more online and making ever greater use of new technologies. A.I. is gaining in popularity because it augments how people operate in the workplace, making them smarter and more efficient. The more that companies turn to technology, however, the more it is important that they address fundamentals such as connectivity and cybersecurity, to ensure they have the speed, capacity and online resilience they need for the future."