Generative AI for Business Growth and Intelligence: Key Impacts & Applications

The rise of generative AI for business growth is often called a “gold rush”—and for good reason. McKinsey & Co. estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in annual economic benefits to the global economy. 

However, not all businesses have embraced AI, even as adoption rises. A November 2023 US Census Bureau survey found that only about 12% of manufacturing, information services, and healthcare firms used AI. This percentage dropped even lower for other sectors. 

Companies that leverage generative AI for business growth gain a significant competitive edge over those that don’t. Industries able to use AI in more functions are already seeing 4.8 times more productivity growth than other sectors, making it important for business owners to understand the benefits of generative AI. 

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI (GenAI) refers to machine-learning models that use deep-learning techniques to create new data and content, including text, images, and videos. These models generate outputs by analyzing vast amounts of training data, identifying patterns and relationships within the datasets, and using these insights to create new data based on user prompts. 

Some examples of GenAI systems include:

• ChatGPT
• Midjourney
• Sora
• DALL-E
• Copilot
• Gemini

Generative AI performs best with diverse, high-quality data. However, successfully implementing generative AI for business growth requires expertise in data management, labeling, and optimization. Working with AI experts can help businesses with this process, formatting raw data into a quality dataset to create a generative AI model for business intelligence. 

Why Generative AI Matters for Business Leaders

While AI is commonly associated with the tech industry, generative AI is useful for business leaders across most industries. AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data, automate processes, and generate high-quality content makes it a powerful tool for companies looking to drive growth and efficiency.“Coders say that generative AI is giving them massive gains in programming efficiency,” notes Professor Charlie Beckett. “Video and audio editors say that it is giving them clever shortcuts.”

Healthcare, logistics, and legal are just a few industries leveraging generative AI for business growth.

Generative AI for Healthcare

AI’s capacity for pattern recognition has made it a promising tool for the healthcare industry. A growing number of healthcare organizations are leveraging generative AI for business growth, including healthcare workflow management and improved diagnostic delivery.

McKinsey & Co.’s Q1 2024 survey found that over 70% of respondents from healthcare organizations are pursuing or have already implemented some form of AI for healthcare. Most respondents expect AI to improve patient and member experience, administrative efficiency, and quality of care. Additionally, 60% anticipate or are already seeing a positive ROI from their GenAI solutions. Providers believe that using generative AI for business growth promises better care and more efficient medical offices.

Research backs these expectations. A 2024 research article notes that AI-driven diagnostics have “the potential to detect signs, patterns, diseases, anomalies, and risks and assist in screening patients for various chronic diseases, making more accurate and data-driven diagnoses and improving clinical decision-making.”

This AI-powered process automation could make doctors faster and more efficient in their work while also catching mistakes doctors might have missed in their initial assessments. Additionally, by using generative AI for business growth, providers could fill the gaps in understaffed regions. AI works around the clock, reducing doctors’ workloads and helping them provide better care to their patients. 

Logistics and Generative AI

While efficient supply chains are essential for businesses, they are vulnerable to severe weather, human error, and other unexpected delays. For example, in 2024, the US alone suffered 27 confirmed weather/climate disaster events, with losses exceeding $1 billion. The severity of these events makes predicting them essential.

Fortunately, using generative AI for business intelligence allows companies to get ahead of potential disruptions. By referencing historical data, AI models can increase human forecasting accuracy by 24 to 28% while reducing forecasting errors by 30% to 50%. Google DeepMind’s GraphCast can even make predictions that outperform 90% of the targets used by the world’s best weather prediction systems in the span of seconds. 

Using generative AI to achieve business growth is a smart move for logistics firms looking for exponential scaling without expending exponential resources. For example, FullStack Labs created an AI-powered solution for an industry-leading logistics firm that is projected to cut document processing costs by as much as 50%. The system is capable of accurately processing complex industry-standard documents four times faster than the client’s legacy system. This boost in efficiency means the client can use generative AI for business growth, rather than adding headcount.

Generative AI for Legal

Law firms have already used some form of AI for years, such as DoNotPay, the AI-powered “robot lawyer” launched in the mid-2010s. As generative AI tools for business growth become more advanced, law firms are eagerly adopting them to streamline time-consuming tasks.In the legal field, using generative AI for business intelligence has seen a rise in popularity. Such GenAI apps can analyze large volumes of legal documents, draft and manage contracts, and integrate with a firm’s legal database to securely manage its data. These systems save attorneys time and energy, making them more effective and helping them manage heavier workloads and additional clients.

These qualities have already led some major law firms to incorporate generative AI for business growth into their systems. Several GenAI platforms designed specifically for the legal profession have been released throughout the last few years, including Harvey AI, CoCounsel, and Westlaw Precision. Dentons and Addleshaw Goddard also announced they were releasing secure chatbots based on GPT technology in 2023, and Baker McKenzie has appointed a new Head of Machine Learning.

What are Some of GenAI’s Drawbacks?

The main drawback of using generative AI for business growth is that the models lack judgment, empathy, and comprehension. They can produce biased outcomes, provide inaccurate data, and violate IP laws. Left unchecked, these flaws can damage reputations, invite legal trouble, and reinforce harmful biases.

AI reflects the data it’s trained on—meaning biased inputs create biased results. For example, a 2023 survey of over 8,500 IT professionals found that 42% used AI screening to “improve recruiting and human resources.” While efficient, researchers have discovered that these algorithms are often trained on biased data, leading them to reinforce those same biases. When recruiting in a field with more men, these models may favor applicants who resemble masculine stereotypes while penalizing marginalized individuals.

Generative AI is also vulnerable to hallucinations, which occur when an algorithm creates inaccurate outputs based on nonexistent or imperceptible patterns. A notable hallucination occurred in 2022 when, after a question about bereavement fares, Air Canada’s chatbot told passenger Jake Moffatt that he qualified for a discount. However, this offer wasn’t in Air Canada’s official policy. While they insisted that the chatbot was a “separate legal entity,” they were instructed to pay Moffatt $812.02 in damages and legal fees.

Finally, if companies aren’t mindful of where they source their data, they may train their AI models on private and copyrighted property. The LAION-5B dataset, for instance, contains nearly six million tagged images compiled from scraping the web, which includes copyrighted material. Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, which have created their models based on this dataset, are facing lawsuits for violating trademark rights.

Fortunately, companies can leverage generative AI for business growth while managing some of these drawbacks. Review best practices to mitigate bias, such as AI governance, training the algorithm on diverse datasets, and implementing guidelines. 

Top Benefits of Generative AI for Business Growth

Organizations looking to scale quickly without compromising quality are increasingly leveraging generative AI tools for business growth. Using GenAI in this context can optimize operations, enhance productivity, and streamline employees’ workdays. Companies can tailor their AI systems to meet industry-specific needs and business objectives while automating repetitive tasks, generating insightful data analysis, and enhancing customer engagement. 

As Professor Beckett says, “It is best to think about generative AI as a set of tools that might supplement your workflow and augment your news gathering, content creation, and distribution.” In other words, generative AI for business growth is a powerful assistant for human experts, allowing companies to expand their capabilities and creative outputs without hiring larger teams. 

AI-Powered Process Automation

AI-powered process automation handles many of a company’s repetitive and time-consuming tasks, reducing costs and boosting productivity.  As Puneet Jagralapudi, Co-Founder of Logarithm Labs explains, “If you have knowledge work, you want to get [workers using] ChatGPT so that they’re more efficient—they can write emails more effectively, they can create term sheets more effectively, what have you.”

Research by McKinsey & Co. found that current AI systems could automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70% of workers' time today, allowing them to focus on more important responsibilities and streamlining operations such as document creation, contract drafting, and code generation. These qualities make generative AI for business growth a valuable tool for scaling operations.

Content Generation

Content creation is one of generative AI’s most popular applications among the public. Eric Sendelback, CPO of TrustArc, notes that GenAI is often used for “party tricks, where you can generate an image of a chimp wearing a spacesuit.” However, content creation is more than a novelty: it is a valuable generative AI tool for business growth.

‍A 2024 global survey of marketing and media leaders found that approximately 42% use AI tools at least a few times per week or daily for writing and content generation. About 40% reported they used these solutions specifically for social media content generation. Other applications for generative AI for business growth include creating web content, blogs, and email campaigns that marketers can refine as needed. AI also supplements human creativity by offering edits, suggestions, and insights that improve efficiency and content quality.

Rather than replacing writers, AI-powered process automation is a collaborative tool, allowing teams to produce more engaging and polished content at a larger scale. 

Customer Service

Companies seldom get a second chance at a good first impression: Recent research found that bad customer experiences could cost companies around the world $3.7 trillion annually. Fortunately, delivering personalized customer experiences with AI has never been more accessible. Using generative AI for business growth opens new opportunities for unique experiences like thoughtful product suggestions, tailored responses, and organic rapport.

Given that 97% of consumers and 98% of contact center managers claimed customer service interactions impacted brand loyalty, the option to automate has undeniable ROI opportunities.

Unlike humans, one of generative AI’s key benefits is its 24/7 availability. With generative AI for business growth, companies can immediately respond to user inquiries any time of day or night. A chatbot can also adapt to user inputs to offer personalized, human-like responses, provide self-service options for independent customers, and, depending on the model, change languages, improving user experience.

Consumers are increasingly embracing AI-powered customer service. In 2024, 82% said they would use a chatbot over waiting for a human representative, and 96% wanted more companies to adopt chatbot technology.

The Future of Generative AI for Business Leaders

Generative AI is becoming more accessible, adaptable, and versatile as time passes. Its growing productivity benefits have led to the rate of AI adoption in at least one business function jumping from 55% in 2023 to 72% in 2024. Gartner anticipates that by 2026, over 80% of organizations will have deployed generative AI tools for business leaders or used generative AI APIs. 

With more industries implementing AI systems by the day, it’s clear that the tool is more than a novelty: it has become necessary for staying competitive. Companies that improve their business scalability with AI enjoy various productivity benefits, while those that don’t will likely struggle to keep up. 

Want to leverage generative AI for business growth? FullStack Labs can help. Our experts develop AI-powered solutions tailored to your unique needs, helping you stay ahead.