Three years since the introduction of gen AI tools triggered a new era of artificial intelligence, nearly nine out of ten survey respondents say their organizations are regularly using AI – but the pace of progress remains uneven.
NB: This is an article from McKinsey & Co.
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While AI tools are now commonplace, most organizations have not yet embedded them deeply enough into their workflows and processes to realize material enterprise-level benefits. The latest McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI reveals a landscape defined by both wider use – including growing proliferation of agentic AI – and stubborn growing pains, with the transition from pilots to scaled impact remaining a work in progress at most organizations.
AI use continues to broaden but remains primarily in pilot phases
Our latest survey shows a larger share of respondents reporting AI use by their organizations, though most have yet to scale the technologies. The share of respondents saying their organizations are using AI in at least one business function has increased since our research last year: 88 percent report regular AI use in at least one business function, compared with 78 percent a year ago. But at the enterprise level, the majority are still in the experimenting or piloting stages (Exhibit 1), with approximately one-third reporting that their companies have begun to scale their AI programs.
Many organizations are already experimenting with AI agents
Organizations are also beginning to explore opportunities with AI agents – systems based on foundation models capable of acting in the real world, planning and executing multiple steps in a workflow. Twenty-three percent of respondents report their organizations are scaling an agentic AI system somewhere in their enterprises (that is, expanding the deployment and adoption of the technology within a least one business function), and an additional 39 percent say they have begun experimenting with AI agents. But use of agents is not yet widespread: Most of those who are scaling agents say they’re only doing so in one or two functions. In any given business function, no more than 10 percent of respondents say their organizations are scaling AI agents (Exhibit 2).
