Busi­ness plans and busi­ness strate­gies gen­er­at­ed by ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) could po­ten­tial­ly re­shape ap­proach­es un­der­tak­en by both large and small busi­ness­es soon.

This was one of the find­ings in Mas­ter­card’s lat­est Sig­nals re­port on Com­merce in the Age of Gen­er­a­tive AI.

Gen­er­a­tive AI is AI that is ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing text, im­ages or oth­er me­dia, us­ing gen­er­a­tive mod­els. Gen­er­a­tive AI mod­els can learn the pat­terns and struc­ture of their in­put train­ing da­ta and then gen­er­ate new da­ta that has sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Ac­cord­ing to Mas­ter­card, the in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ment and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, the re­port ex­plored how the de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of gen­er­a­tive AI will ad­vance the Next Econ­o­my, as it as­sessed the lat­est de­vel­op­ments and in­no­va­tions in AI while weigh­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties against the chal­lenges.

The re­port sought to high­light how these in­no­va­tions would im­pact spe­cif­ic sec­tors in­clud­ing en­ter­prise, fi­nance, small busi­ness, re­tail, and trav­el. Mas­ter­card not­ed the re­port’s da­ta re­vealed im­pli­ca­tions for dig­i­tal pay­ments, fin­tech, SMEs, tourism, busi­ness, and new tech­nol­o­gy’s im­pli­ca­tions for the fu­ture of com­merce.

In the case of small busi­ness­es, the re­port not­ed that the propen­si­ty of SMEs to adopt dig­i­tal prac­tices could see AI play­ing a trans­for­ma­tive role in their de­vel­op­ment.

The re­port stat­ed: “Small busi­ness­es have evolved over the last sev­er­al years to be­come in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal. At the same time, the gig and cre­ator economies have grown, re­sult­ing in more one-per­son com­pa­nies. Gen­er­a­tive AI can be an in­valu­able tool for sup­port­ing solo­pre­neurs and small busi­ness­es by adding AI knowl­edge work­ers to the team — imag­ine dig­i­tal CFOs of­fer­ing fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and dig­i­tal CMOs or­ches­trat­ing mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.”

On the top­ic of com­merce in the age of gen­er­a­tive AI, the re­port point­ed out that ‘Gen­er­a­tive AI’ gar­nered ex­ten­sive at­ten­tion in re­cent months for its star­tling abil­i­ty to repli­cate hu­man ex­pres­sion and pro­duce hu­man-sound­ing con­tent. Mas­ter­card said it ex­plored this new tech­nol­o­gy’s im­pli­ca­tions for the fu­ture of com­merce as it had shown the po­ten­tial to strength­en cus­tomer en­gage­ment, cre­ate more ef­fi­cient busi­ness op­er­a­tions, sup­port soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and much more.

“Un­like oth­er tech­nolo­gies that have seen hype cy­cles,” the re­port not­ed, “gen­er­a­tive AI ex­hibits clear-use cas­es, has led to the cre­ation of ro­bust so­lu­tions, and is de­vel­op­ing swift­ly. New op­por­tu­ni­ties will con­tin­ue to ap­pear. This tech­nol­o­gy is poised to be trans­for­ma­tive across near­ly every sec­tor.”

The re­port con­tin­ued that in the com­ing years, gen­er­a­tive AI will “pow­er count­less ca­pa­bil­i­ties across busi­ness and con­sumer ap­pli­ca­tions, and be­spoke mod­els will be de­vel­oped for spe­cif­ic in­dus­tries in­clud­ing health­care, le­gal, and fi­nance. For ex­am­ple, mod­els that ac­cess and learn from spe­cif­ic da­ta, such as trans­ac­tion his­to­ry, will pro­vide bet­ter bank­ing in­ter­ac­tions.”

Mas­ter­card high­light­ed in par­tic­u­lar, the de­vel­op­ment of use cas­es, which could be piv­otal for busi­ness go­ing for­ward.

The re­port said, “Com­pa­nies ex­plor­ing gen­er­a­tive AI are as­sess­ing both stand-alone in­te­gra­tions of the tech­nol­o­gy and ways to make tra­di­tion­al AI ap­pli­ca­tions more com­pelling and per­son­alised with a gen AI over­lay.”

Based on the da­ta analysed in the re­port, Mas­ter­card high­light­ed sev­er­al sec­tor-spe­cif­ic use cas­es like­ly to emerge in the next five to sev­en years.

For arge en­ter­pris­es, the re­port stat­ed, “Gen­er­a­tive AI has the po­ten­tial to make cor­po­rate col­lab­o­ra­tions much more ag­ile. AI tools, via ma­chine learn­ing, can fa­cil­i­tate the hor­i­zon­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­for­ma­tion in near re­al-time — imag­ine knowl­edge bots in­stan­ta­neous­ly of­fer­ing in­sights dur­ing strat­e­gy ses­sions. The cor­po­rate land­scape will take on a new dy­namism as em­ploy­ees op­er­ate with in­creased speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty and process­es be­come stream­lined.”

In the fi­nance sec­tor, the re­port opined, “To­day’s fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem is marked by its com­plex­i­ty, which re­quires in­ter­ac­tions be­tween in­sti­tu­tions — in­clud­ing banks, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, in­vest­ment firms and gov­ern­men­tal en­ti­ties — for tax­a­tion and prop­er­ty reg­is­tra­tion pur­pos­es. Gen­er­a­tive AI, in syn­er­gy with in­formed da­ta con­sent pro­to­cols, could de­clut­ter and stream­line these process­es, ef­fec­tive­ly act­ing as a per­son­al wealth man­ag­er with an en­com­pass­ing view of an in­di­vid­ual’s fi­nan­cial life.”

The re­port stat­ed that it ex­pect­ed the re­tail sec­tor to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed as AI-as­sist­ed shop­ping could be­come a wider pos­si­bil­i­ty.

It stat­ed, “E-com­merce lead­ers like Ama­zon and Al­iba­ba of­fer more choic­es, help­ful cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als, and price com­par­isons — but the sheer vol­ume of op­tions can in­un­date con­sumers and lead to in­de­ci­sive­ness. AI-pow­ered per­son­al shop­ping con­sul­tants with an in­tri­cate un­der­stand­ing of your pref­er­ences could scan count­less chan­nels, weed out prod­ucts with bad re­views, pin­point the most cost-ef­fec­tive op­tions, and re­trieve the ex­act items you seek.”

As for the re­cov­er­ing trav­el sec­tor, the re­port not­ed that the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy could help ease up the process of plan­ning trips and in the process make con­sumers less over­whelmed when con­sid­er­ing their op­tions.

“Or­ga­niz­ing a trip can of­ten feel like as­sem­bling an elab­o­rate jig­saw puz­zle, re­quir­ing trav­ellers to piece to­geth­er myr­i­ad com­po­nents across many time zones and cur­ren­cies. AI-fa­cil­i­tat­ed au­toma­tion can sim­pli­fy the process. Imag­ine em­ploy­ing a voice in­ter­face on a plat­form like Ex­pe­dia. Rather than be­ing in­un­dat­ed with op­tions, you’ll re­ceive de­tailed itin­er­aries with con­firmed ac­com­mo­da­tions, trans­porta­tion book­ings and din­ing reser­va­tions tai­lored to your pref­er­ences,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port has al­so not­ed that while the use of AI soft­ware like Chat­G­PT has be­come more com­mon, there were signs that AI’s im­pact could be fur­ther am­pli­fied, as it not­ed: “Plug-ins al­low com­pa­nies like Ex­pe­dia, In­stacart and Klar­na to ex­pose their APIs to a con­ver­sa­tion­al in­ter­face with­out the need for users to pro­gram the in­ter­face di­rect­ly. This crit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment helped trans­form gen AI in­to a prac­ti­cal tool that en­hances con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ences.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­port stat­ed, “Open-source tech­nolo­gies, such as Meta’s LLa­Ma, let in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies man­age the stor­age and ac­cess of da­ta — em­pow­er­ing them to use gen­er­a­tive AI safe­ly with­out dis­clos­ing their un­der­ly­ing da­ta.”

In the fi­nan­cial sec­tor, the Sig­nals re­port stat­ed, “Open bank­ing, which al­lows users to share their bank­ing da­ta so they can ac­cess fin­tech and oth­er ser­vices, will let con­sumers con­trol the use of their da­ta by these AI mod­els. Through open bank­ing, gen­er­a­tive AI can ac­cess a broad­er dataset and con­se­quent­ly cre­ate more so­phis­ti­cat­ed mod­els in spe­cif­ic ver­ti­cal mar­kets.”

How­ev­er, the re­port urged that the pub­lic pro­ceed with cau­tion.

It stat­ed, “As or­gan­i­sa­tions as­sess how to im­ple­ment gen­er­a­tive AI, they need to bal­ance the de­sire to move fast and seize an ear­ly adopter ad­van­tage with a cau­tious ap­proach that nav­i­gates nu­mer­ous threats and risks. Po­ten­tial mine­fields in­her­ent in this new tech­nol­o­gy in­clude bi­ased out­put, job dis­rup­tion, the spread of fake in­for­ma­tion, mar­ket ma­nip­u­la­tion, in­creased cy­ber­crime, and the vi­o­la­tion of pri­va­cy rights and copy­right pro­tec­tions.”

The re­port pre­dict­ed that in the next five to sev­en years there could be wide­spread in­te­gra­tion of AI use.

The re­port said, “Gen­er­al-pur­pose mod­els will be­come com­mon­place as they’re in­te­grat­ed in­to ap­pli­ca­tions. And open stan­dards will en­able the de­vel­op­ment of spe­cial­ized AI so­lu­tions for spe­cif­ic sec­tors in­clud­ing health­care, le­gal and fi­nance.”

The Sig­nals re­port not­ed da­ta dif­fer­en­tia­tors would al­so be piv­otal go­ing for­ward as it not­ed, “AI mod­els re­quire vast amounts of train­ing da­ta, but high-val­ue da­ta is of­ten con­fined with­in pro­pri­etary sys­tems. As a re­sult, en­ti­ties that hold crit­i­cal da­ta, such as large banks and tech com­pa­nies, will re­al­ize an out­sized ad­van­tage from the use of gen­er­a­tive AI. Al­so, com­pa­nies that ex­cel in da­ta se­cu­ri­ty will thrive.”

Mas­ter­card stat­ed it al­so ex­pect­ed in­creased AI-to-AI in­ter­ac­tions as the re­port stat­ed, “Some be­spoke AI ap­pli­ca­tions may re­quire a sin­gle per­son­alised AI bot to or­ches­trate oth­er bots. AI-to-AI.”