10 Generative AI Trends in the Workplace: 2024 Edition

Trend no. 1: Human-AI synergy

2023 was the year of AI integration, 2024 will be the year of human-AI synergy.

By now, most of us have played around with chat-based AI like ChatGPT or Bard. As you probably noticed yourself, it takes quite some time and effort to get the right output from generative AI tools. Building out good prompts is almost like an art form. Simple content creation tasks take a lot of iterations, and even then, hallucination is a thing.

In short: Synergy is lacking. But what do we mean by Human-AI synergy?

Human + AI synergy is people and AI, collaborating harmoniously, creating a workflow where each party leverages its strengths, resulting in higher efficiency, better quality of output, and overall improved productivity.

In order to increase the adoption and usability of AI in the workplace, a push for true synergy - and not just more use cases - is needed. Something we believe we’ll see happen in 2024.

So what does synergy look like?

Imagine an AI, not as a passive chatbot that you have to feed heaps of context and massive datasets, but as a silent partner, running in the background of your processes.

Embedding itself into your knowledge base and working processes, learning, and providing you with input whenever necessary. A helpful companion, always up to speed on what you’re working on, proactively assisting you - or just there for you when you need it. Responding to both chat and voice inputs in real-time. Omnipresent and omnihelpful.

In other words: An AI Workmate - a digital version of yourself, that joins you where you work.

We believe this is what the human-AI interaction will like in 2024, and that true synergy is a crucial prerequisite for further adoption and maturing of AI systems in the workplace. Which leads us to trend number 2.

Trend no. 2: The rise of personal(ized) generative AI

By now, many people have their own ChatGPT instance where they’ve prompted up a conversation (or multiple) in such a way, that it delivers highly relevant results - most of the time. In a way, this is a first step towards personal AI - and as is the case more often: where demand looms, the market flows.

That’s why we expect to see a push towards personal(ized) AI in 2024. 
Personalized AI is generative AI technology that is trained and contextually enriched by your actions. It’s embedded in the systems you use on a daily basis, to learn about you and how you work. As a result, personalized AI can provide you with output specifically tailored to you, leading to an overall better user experience.

Personalized AI can help you excel in ways generic generative AI models can not. Imagine asking a conversational AI a question, and instead of a generic fit-for-everyone type answer, your personal(ized) AI assistant takes your individual circumstances as context to generate an answer.

If you think gen-AI applications are already great in their current form, wait until you first work with personalized AI. Such AI capabilities ensure increased productivity, faster and better decision-making, better on-the-job performance, and overall ease of mind, completely altering the way we work and perform in our professional lives.

Trend no. 3: Maturing of the AI-enabled employee

The integration of AI in the workplace is already reshaping how we think about work and is giving rise to the AI-enabled employee.

If 2023 was the year of AI revolution, we're expecting further evolution in the way AI is enabling employees in 2024. Moving away from the one-size-fits-all approach of generic-purpose AI in pockets of an organization, to company-wide full-on adoption of personalized AI models.

Artificial intelligence is set to shift from a person-to-person enabler into a strategic powerhouse seamlessly embedded in company-wide workflows, taking the role of the ultimate troubleshooter. Here is how it will impact individuals & companies.


‍For the Individual:

• Heightened productivity and efficiency,
• Broadened skill set through collaboration with AI,
• Hyper focus on high-value tasks due to automation of routine and admin work.

For Organizations:

• Improved productivity and efficiency via AI-enabled workflows,
• Increased individual independence due to AI being a troubleshooter,
• Increased cost-effectiveness due to AI-powered automation.

The maturing of the AI-enabled employee will gradually ‘massage us into’ a new era of work. That’s why it’s on spot number 3 in our top 10 AI trends in the workplace for 2024.

Trend no.4: Filling the AI adoption gap

The earliest adopters of AI in the workforce, by now, have spent a full year of learning about AI, integrating it into their workflow, and maximising their output. The ‘late majority’ and ‘laggards’ have 
spent significantly less time, or haven’t even started dabbling with AI yet.

This asynchronous adoption of AI across organizations (and the broader workforce) has resulted in a productivity gap between AI-enabled and non-AI-enabled employees.

This divide separates companies harnessing AI's potential from those yet to embrace it. In 2024, we expect that with many of those late to the AI game, the realisation will kick in that AI is here to stay, and can greatly benefit overall productivity and job satisfaction, resulting in a sprint to upskill the non-AI enabled employees to actively fill the adoption gap.

In short - 2024 will be the year of the great ‘catch up’ race, where teams and full organizations scramble to become AI-enabled. And as with the initial adoption of generic generative AI applications, the same is true here: The best time to start was yesterday, the next best time is now.

Start now, through:

• Tailored training: Emphasizing practical AI Applications to equip employees with hands-on skills.
• Real-world showcases: Illustrating industry-specific generative AI use cases to bridge the gap between AI concepts and everyday work scenarios.
• Ethical education: Delving into the ethical landscape of AI, covering data privacy and the impact of decision-making algorithms to instill responsible usage.

Adoption of new technology demands a plan, and investment in both time and money. In 2024, many organizations will have to make this investment.
That’s why ‘filling the adoption gap’ is 4th in our list of AI technology trends for the 2024 workplace.

Trend no.5: Niche-fication of AI in the workplace

The niche-fication of AI is set to revolutionize work processes by enabling smaller, more specialized, specific-purpose application of AI. This phenomenon where AI is applied to - and integrated in all sorts of micro processes - is something we’ve seen being accelerated last November, when OpenAI introduced the AI Marketplace where users can customize and build their own GPTs to take over specific tasks or purposes.

In 2024, we expect Niche AI (in the form of GPT’s or something similar) to find its way into the workplace, allowing businesses and individuals to fully customize AI to fit their processes and workflows.



This allows for a multitude of benefits:

• Swift adoption of AI frameworks without workflow disruptions or the need for extensive technical know-how.
• Flexible and scalable AI solutions that adapt to business growth and the evolving needs of an organization.
• Enhanced efficiency and cost-effectiveness by using custom AI applications.

These applications automate tasks, optimize resource allocation, and enable teams to prioritize strategic initiatives.

As we watch Niche AI evolve, they’ll open up exciting possibilities for the future of work, making our interactions with technology more intuitive, helpful, and ultimately human. That’s why it’s on the 5th place in our top 10 of AI in the workplace trends for 2024.

Trend no.6: General adoption of generative design

From DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, to Midjourney and Adobe Firefly,
in the span of little more than a year, Generative Design tools have transitioned from exclusive closed betas to a widespread phenomenon, giving everyone the opportunity to 
effortlessly create exceptional images by simply entering a prompt.

While primarily a gimmick over the largest part of 2023, we believe that generative design will be taken more seriously in 2024. 
Not as a way to create end products, but definitely as a creative kickstarter, or design enhancing method.

After all, AI can accelerate the design process by:

• Streamlining the concept phase,
• Enhancing near finished designs,
• Improving speed and efficiency.

The synergy between human ingenuity and AI-driven generative design represents a pivotal evolution. And while the world of Generative Design is still in its infancy, in 2024, we are expecting to see remarkable advancements and wider integration across industries, fostering a paradigm shift in design methodologies and product innovation.

The canvas of possibilities continues to expand. That’s why General adoption of Generative Design is on the 6th place on our trend list.

Trend no.7: Maturing of AI-generated video

Most people are familiar with text based generative AI through, for example, ChatGPT and Bard. By now, many have also dabbled with AI image generators like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Dall-E. But 2023 has seen the rapid evolution of another AI driven medium: generative video.

As with text and image based generative AI, generative video models predict the next pixel in a line of pixels - based on heaps of training data they’ve received when the model in question was created. And as with text and image based gen-AI, more and more people are realizing where the development of this technology is moving towards, and the potentially revolutionary impact it can have on many industries.

Combine that with the rapid technological advancements in the AI video space, and it’s clear to see that 2024 is going to be an exciting year for AI video. For example, the output from Runway AI went from fuzzy and vague in March 2023, to sharp, and almost cinema-ready in November that same year. A matter of months!

We believe it won’t be long before Generative Video finds its way into content, ads, or even full-blown tv shows and movies. Probably to fill up minor flaws, gaps or inconsistencies in editing at first. But as with everything, as soon as the technological solution is faster and potentially cheaper than the real deal, but good enough to pass as real — we’ve reached a tipping point, and there is no going back.

We can’t say if we’ll reach that exact point next year already, but this one is certain: AI Video technology will continue to evolve rapidly, and 2024 will be the year where generative video matures. That’s why it’s on the 7th place in our top 10 of AI in the workplace trends for 2024.

Trend no.8: Standardization of Gen-AI in applications

After the launch of ChatGPT, and subsequently its open API, the road was clear for organisations to embed generative AI into their software without developing a large language model themselves. And this concept 
was swiftly adopted.Now, at the start of 2024, we see many large tech companies integrate Generative AI into their platforms.

Companies like:

• Canva employs generative AI to streamline 
users’ creation of their own unique designs. According to Canva, users are now 
saving nearly 60% of their time by utilizing the platform's integrated automation tools.
• Notion, introduced ‘Notion AI’. A writing assistant that helps users write, brainstorm, edit, summarize and more.
• Adobe, added a ‘generative fill’ functionality to photoshop, allowing users to add, remove or expand content in images with simple text prompts.
• Shopify launched its AI assistant ‘sidekick’, designed to assist store owners in managing various aspects of their online stores.


And these are just a few of the many examples out there - of organizations embedding AI into their solutions to enhance the end user’s experience. In 2024, with the commercialization of AI in full effect, we expect more vendors to incorporate AI solutions in their applications.

Leading to a reality where AI integration in apps becomes the standard. Something we believe will improve productivity, quality of work and overall on-the-job happiness. This is why it’s on the 8th place in our top 10 of AI in the workplace trends for 2024.

Trend no.9: Rules and regulations

Since the term ‘AI’ was first used in 1955 by John McCarthy, the concept of Artificial Intelligence has had an integral presence in our society.

Whether through scientific papers, art, books or movies, AI was an ever present topic and somewhat of a holy grail for humans to develop. In those works there were always two interpretations of the AI future:

• A utopian one
• A dystopian one

Now that the progression towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) seems to have progressed to a next phase with the Large Language Model Breakthrough, and the adoption of AI going faster than ever before, rules and regulations will (have to) be put in place with the aim to guide us away from the dystopian future, and towards the utopian one. A complex balancing act - because regulation, often tends to hinder innovation - but unregulated development of AI can cause issues.

What makes it even more complex is the fact that the rate of AI development outpaces the rate of development of legislation by a huge margin. Meaning: by the time a legislative proposal is done and voted for - there’s a high probability it is outdated.

Which is something we’ve seen recently with the EU AI-Act, that after 1,5 years of development required another full year of discussion, because ChatGPT launched during this timeframe. It is now scheduled for voting, early 2024 and goes into effect in 2025 - If there are no hiccups along the way.

Meanwhile, it’s safe to say that technology-wise, no one has the slightest idea of what the world of AI will look like in 2025. See the conundrum?

But one way or another, rules and regulations are necessary to make sure there are guard rails on the road to AI Utopia. Something we will definitely see more of in 2024. That’s why it’s on the 9th place in our list of AI trends in the workplace.

Trend no. 10: Mainstream discourse

In 2023, the breakthrough of LLM-based AI sparked a surge of interest in the field. Initially, within specific niches, but shortly after, captivating the broader mainstream. OpenAI's ChatGPT stole the show, becoming the fastest adopted app in history with 100 million MAU by January.
Just 2 months after launch!

In the new year, the stage is set for AI to become a more deeply integrated, and consistent part of our lives, not just at work, but in our everyday routines too.
Before long, even good old grandma might start asking about AI at family gatherings. In short: AI will take centre stage in mainstream discourse.

The integration of AI into our daily lives will have a profound effect on how we work, live, and interact with each other. It impacts us as a species on a global level, and it might very well be that the time we’re living in today will be seen as
 ‘a pivotal moment in our existence’.

As we move further into 2024, the discussion around AI, the implementation and use of it, the questions around further development of AI Models and everything that comes with this new breakthrough technology, will be invaluable in moving forward on the right path.

That’s why ‘the mainstream discourse’ is on the 10th and final place in our top 10 of 
AI in the workplace trends for 2024.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the landscape of generative AI in the workplace is set for dynamic transformations in 2024. The overarching theme revolves around the evolution from mere integration to achieving genuine synergy between humans and AI.

As we embrace these generative AI trends, we will reshape the way we work, collaborate, and innovate, ushering in a new era of productivity, efficiency, and human-AI collaboration.