IT pros are grappling with the ways ChatGPT can be worked into the enterprise stack. The generative artificial intelligence from OpenAI has demonstrated the ability to compile reports, craft marketing pitches and write software code, which makes it seem convenient for business use. Yet concerns remain, including potential security risks and sometimes erratic or inappropriate data feedback. In the past week, one third-party tester had ChatGPT pledge love for its interlocutor, while another received a detailed lecture on why cow eggs are bigger than chicken eggs.

While virtually everyone agrees that the algorithmic software represents tremendous progress for generative AI, tapping vast stores of data to create unique output based on human prompts, business users are “worried about ChatGPT’s grip on reality,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which quotes one management consultant saying that “at the moment, ChatGPT ‘should be used with caution in an enterprise business setting.’”

As speed and language capabilities are improved, and advanced safety and security features added over the next year or two, applications like enterprise search, sales tool integration and communications platform uses will emerge.

“Generative AI is capable of amazing things, but as a whole, needs maturing,” Intuit chief data officer Ashok Srivastava told WSJ. That said, any chief technology officer “who doesn’t have their app-development team thinking about how to apply ChatGPT and generative AI is ‘putting their company at a disadvantage,’” WSJ quoted another enterprise exec saying, calling generative AI “the biggest technical leap forward since cloud computing.”

Future possibilities are nearly endless, but as for what it can do today, consensus is that the most work still needs to be checked by humans. Computerworld cites a study by research firm Gartner forecasting that “by 2025, the market for AI software will reach almost $134.8 billion, and market growth is expected to accelerate from 14.4 percent in 2021 to 31.1 percent in 2025 — far outpacing overall growth in the software market.”

A significant portion of the AI market will be for chatbot technology, a form of AI that uses natural language to respond to user queries. “The human-like answers are in the form of prose; more sophisticated programs allow for follow-up questions and responses, and they can be modified for specific business purposes,” writes Computerworld, explaining the difference between ChatGPT and GPT-3, as detailed in the Gartner report, which focuses on generative AI enterprise use cases (including drug design, chip design and material science, among others).

Related:
4 Roadblocks to Business Adoption of Generative AI, CIO Dive, 2/13/23
ChatGPT’s Killer Enterprise Use Case Will Be Managing Knowledge, Says EY CTO, VentureBeat, 1/23/23
Microsoft Will Let Companies Create Their Own Custom Versions of ChatGPT, CNBC, 2/7/23