Banks worldwide, including those in India, have a significant opportunity to enhance productivity and boost revenues by integrating generative AI (GenAI) into their operations, according to a report by IT consultancy firm Accenture. The study analyzed publicly available employee data to assess the impact of GenAI on banking tasks and modeled the financial implications for over 150 large banks globally over a three-year period.

The research findings suggest that banks implementing GenAI swiftly across their organizations could potentially increase revenues by up to 600 basis points (bps) within three years. Effective adoption and scaling of GenAI could also lead to a substantial 30% increase in employee productivity by streamlining various language-related tasks. Additionally, the study highlighted that operating income could see a significant uptick of around 20%, while return on equity levels might rise by 300 bps. Moreover, GenAI could drive cost savings of 1-2% by enhancing operational efficiency, with cost-to-income ratios potentially declining by up to 400 bps.

Accenture emphasized the critical importance of optimizing the usage of GenAI applications by banks, alongside upskilling existing employees and attracting specialized AI and data talent to support scaling and operationalization efforts. The report identified that 41% of all banking occupations have high potential for automation, indicating substantial scope for leveraging AI technologies in the sector.

Manoj Singodia, MD and Lead-Financial Services at Accenture in India, stressed the necessity for banks to adopt a holistic and long-term strategy to unlock the full potential of GenAI. This strategy involves integrating AI into banks’ value chains, reimagining traditional processes, and building a robust foundation of data and digital capabilities powered by cloud technology.

In summary, the Accenture report highlights the transformative potential of generative AI in the banking sector, offering a pathway for banks to enhance productivity, drive revenue growth, and optimize operational efficiency. As banks in India and globally navigate the evolving digital landscape, the strategic adoption of AI technologies like GenAI is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of banking operations and customer experiences.

In a recent report on cloud complexity, NetApp, the intelligent data infrastructure company, highlights a distinct division between countries leading the way in artificial intelligence (AI) and those lagging behind. The report offers global insights into the advancement, preparedness, obstacles, and momentum surrounding AI adoption, emphasizing the crucial role of unified data infrastructure in achieving AI success. According to the NetApp report nations such as India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States are leading the charge on AI adoption and innovation.

Conversely, countries like Spain, Australia, and Germany are identified as laggards in this technological advancement The report, conducted in collaboration with Savanta, surveyed over 1,300 executives across ten countries to gauge AI implementation status in various industries. It revealed that 60 per cent companies in leading countries like India, Singapore, UK and USA, have AI projects up and running or in pilot. In contrast only 36 per cent of companies in AI-lag-ging countries like Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan have embarked on similar AI initiatives. The report also suggests that, both AI leaders and AI laggards show a difference in their approach to AI. Globally, 67 per cent of companies in AI-leading countries report having hybrid IT environments, India leading with 70 per cent and Japan lagging at 24 per cent.

AI leaders are also more likely to report benefits from AI, including a 50 per cent increase in production rates, 46 per cent in the automation of routine activities and 45 per cent improvement in customer experience. “The rise of AI is ushering in a new disrupt-or-die era,” said Gabie Boko, Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp. “Data-ready enterprises that connect and unify broad structured and unstructured data sets into an intelligent data infrastructure are best positioned to win in the age of AI.”

The report suggests AI-laggard countries to must swiftly innovate and adopt AI if they want to remain competitive. About 42 per cent companies in AI-lagging countries have optimised their IT environments for AI. In Germany 67 per cent companies and in Spain 59 per cent companies have optimized their IT environment for AI. “AI is only as good as the data that fuels it,” said Pravjit Tiwana, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Cloud Storage at NetApp. “Both the AI leaders and AI laggards show us that in the prevailing hybrid IT environment, the more unified and reliable your data, the more likely your AI initiatives are to be successful.”

The report says that, IT cost and data security are major challenges for AI adoption and innovations, but it won’t stop the progress of AI. The report concludes that the disparity underscores the growing importance of AI in driving economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness on a global scale. Nations that are proactive in embracing AI technology are likely to enjoy significant advantages in various sectors, including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. However, those slower to adopt risk will fall behind in the race for technological supremacy and the associated benefits it brings.

The acquisition is expected to aid AMD compete better against American chipmaker Nvidia.

The acquisition of Nod. ai by American Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will increase the company’s open AI capabilities. The chipmaker claimed the partnership clearly aligns with AMD’s AI growth strategy, which is focused on an open software environment, as part of its statement on Wednesday. Nod.ai’s inclusion will provide it access to a skilled crew.

Top hyperscalers (large-scale data centers), businesses, and startups receive optimized AI solutions from Nod.ai. For more than 50 years, AMD has been into computing graphics and visualisation technologies. “The acquisition of Nod.ai is expected to significantly enhance our ability to provide AI customers with open software that allows them to easily deploy highly performant AI models tuned for AMD hardware,” said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president, of the Artificial Intelligence Group at AMD.

“The addition of the talented Nod. ai team accelerates our ability to advance open-source compiler technology and enable portable, high-performance AI solutions across the AMD product portfolio. Nod.ai’s technologies are already widely deployed in the cloud, at the edge and across a broad range of endpoint devices today,” Boppana added. According to Anush Elangovan, co-founder and CEO, of Nod.ai, “By joining forces with AMD, we will bring this expertise to a broader range of customers on a global scale.”

The American multinational semiconductor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in July this year announced it would invest approximately USD 400 million in India over the next five years.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Threads, Meta’s text-based conversation app, boasts over 150 million monthly active users, positioning it as a competitor to Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter). The monthly active user count for Threads surged from around 100 million users in October last year to 130 million in February.

At an earnings meeting for Meta, Zuckerberg said: “[Threads] continues to be on the trajectory that I hope to see.” He said in July that he expected Threads to become the next billion-user social network in Meta’s apps suite which also includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Since Threads’ launch last year, Meta has been working on creating a range of new features like a fully functional web application, keyword search, trending topics, edit button, voice posts, and the ability to support multiple accounts.

Additionally, the company has been boosting Threads’ posts on its video and photo-sharing platform, Instagram, in order to expand its social network .In March this year, Meta took a significant stride towards fulfilling its commitment to enhance interoperability for Threads. It started allowing users in countries such as the United States, Canada, and Japan to share their posts to the ‘fediverse’. The fediverse comprises decentralised social networks, such as Mastodon, that can interact with one another using the ActivityPub protocol.

The feature will be available to all users with public profiles above the age of 18 in these countries. Meta is testing a Threads API, aiming to empower creators, developers, and brands to construct their own distinctive integrations, efficiently manage their Threads presence, and distribute content to their communities. Meta’s API empowers developers to authenticate, publish posts, and retrieve their own content. Additionally, the company has recently introduced reply management capabilities, enabling users to access responses to their posts, configure reply settings, and conceal or reveal specific replies.

In a blog posted earlier this month, the company said, “Insights are one of our top requested features for the API, so we are making it possible for people to fetch key metrics for their posts, including the number of likes or views. We are also working on webhooks, which will allow developers to receive real-time notifications when certain events occur on the platform, such as a reply to a given post.” Meta said it is currently working with companies such as Grabyo, Hootsuite, Social News Desk, Sprinklr, Sprout Social, and Techmeme, with plans to make the API available by the end of June this year.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, anticipates that the combined revenue from YouTube and Cloud businesses will exceed $100 billion by the end.

During the earnings call on April 25, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that both YouTube and Google’s cloud business are projected to collectively surpass $100 billion in revenue by the end of 2024, showcasing new avenues of profitability for the company. Pichai emphasized their track record of investing in and nurturing successful, emerging businesses.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced revenue of $80.5 billion for the January-March quarter of 2024, marking a 15% increase from the previous year. Operating income rose by 46.3%, and net income surged by 57%. The company generated sales, excluding partner payouts, of $67.6 billion for the three months that ended on March 31, surpassing the $66.1 billion expected on average by analysts, as per Bloomberg. The company’s net income was $1.89 per share, compared with Wall Street’s estimate of $1.53 per share.

Alphabet also declared its first-ever dividend at 20 cents per share and confirmed plans to repurchase another $70 billion in stock. In the first quarter of this year, YouTube earned $8.1 billion from ad sales, its highest ever for Q1, up 21 per cent from the same period last year. And this number doesn’t include the money brought in from its annual subscriptions.

Meanwhile, Google’s revenue from its subscriptions, platforms, and devices, including services like YouTube Premium and YouTube TV, reached $8.7 billion in the quarter, a 17.9 per cent increase from last year. Philipp Schindler, Alphabet’s chief business officer, attributed this revenue growth to the rising number of YouTube subscriptions.

While Google doesn’t disclose specific figures for this segment, Pichai mentioned in January that the subscription business earned $15 billion in 2023. YouTube announced it had surpassed 100 million paid subscribers for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music in January 2024, up from 80 million in November 2022.

YouTube TV has over eight million paid subscribers in the United States. Additionally, Google One, the company’s cloud storage service, reached 100 million subscribers in February. In February, the search engine giant consolidated numerous advanced generative AI features into a fresh subscription plan known as the Google One AI Premium Plan.

This plan is accessible in India for a monthly fee of Rs 1,950, granting subscribers entry to an upgraded iteration of its chatbot Gemini, dubbed Gemini Advanced. Gemini Advanced is tailored for handling intricate tasks and operates on the AI model Gemini Ultra 1.0. Subscribers will additionally gain access to Gemini’s functionalities within Alphabet’s suite of productivity applications, including Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Meet. Google has been pushing its subscription growth with various initiatives.

In October 2023, YouTube launched a global effort against ad blockers, extending it to third-party apps later. Google Photos ended its free unlimited storage in June 2021. In February, Google introduced advanced generative AI features under a new Google One AI Premium Plan, available in India.

The cloud unit’s revenue surged by 28.4 per cent to $9.6 billion, with operating income rising to $900 million in Q1 2024. Pichai credited the strong performance of YouTube, Google Cloud, and the search business for the company’s overall revenue growth in the quarter.

Microsoft Corporation announced robust financial results for its third quarter ending on March 31, with revenue soaring to $61.9 billion, marking a notable 17% increase from the previous year. The company’s profits reached $2.94 per share; surpassing analyst estimates of $2.83 per share on sales of $60.9 billion.

The stellar performance was largely attributed to strong corporate demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) offerings. CEO Satya Nadella’s strategy of integrating AI technology from OpenAI into Microsoft’s product line showed significant returns, with an uptick in customers utilizing AI tools for various tasks. The company’s Azure cloud platform reported a remarkable 31% revenue gain, surpassing expectations and indicating continued growth momentum.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood highlighted the widespread growth across Azure services, emphasizing the importance of both AI and non-AI services. Microsoft’s commercial cloud product revenue increased by 23% to $35.1 billion, with commercial bookings growing by 29%. Looking ahead, Microsoft projects further growth in Azure revenue for the current quarter, with expansion plans for its global data center network to meet rising demand for AI services.

Additionally, the company aims for a sales and operating income growth of more than 10% for the fiscal year starting July 1. Despite its strong performance, Microsoft remains focused on enhancing security measures, recently introducing AI tools in its cybersecurity business. The company also benefited from growth in its traditional desktop software business and gaming sector, following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft’s continued expansion is evident in its aggressive investment in infrastructure, with capital expenditures reaching $14 billion in the quarter.

The company anticipates a further increase in capital spending to meet the growing demand for AI services, reflecting its commitment to staying ahead in the rapidly evolving tech landscape. Security remains a top priority for Microsoft, with recent enhancements in its cybersecurity business to better detect and mitigate threats. However, the company faces challenges following a critical report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board, leading to its most significant security overhaul in over two decades.

In addition to its cloud and AI growth, Microsoft’s traditional desktop software business saw an 11% increase in revenue, driven by a recovering PC market. Furthermore, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard contributed to a significant boost in Xbox content and services revenue, demonstrating Microsoft’s diversification strategy in the gaming sector.

Overall, Microsoft’s strong financial performance underscores its position as a leader in the technology industry. With a strategic focus on innovation, cloud computing, and AI, the company is well-positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities and drive sustainable growth in the years to come.