With new AI tools, integrations, and use cases coming out almost daily, I know it can be overwhelming to keep up with how AI is changing business.
Take DeepSeek R1, for example. Created by Chinese company DeepSeek, the AI model turned the world on its head when it was first launched in January 2025. It disrupted the entire AI industry, helping researchers and marketers to do research, brainstorm, and generate content very quickly and at no cost.
Most professionals believe AI innovations will be comparable to the industrial revolution. So, if you’re wondering exactly how AI is changing business, then you’ve come to the right place.
At its core, I think the advent of AI means one big thing for the future of business: marketing, sales, and service professionals now have more time to work on complex, higher-impact work while AI takes care of mundane tasks.
Here are a few ways AI’s already changing the workplace and what we can look forward to, according to our State of AI survey of 1,350 U.S. professionals.
Table of Contents
How AI Is Used in Business Today
1. Marketing
Marketers across different organizations are leveraging AI to enhance their ability to target and effectively grab the attention of their audiences. Nearly 75% of marketers use AI to perform their day-to-day roles, and over 68% of marketing leaders who invested in AI report seeing a positive ROI, according to our recent State of AI in Marketing report.
Research by Meta also reveals that campaigns that use AI-powered tools have an average click-through rate 11% higher and a conversion rate 7.6% higher compared to those not using AI.
Example of AI in Marketing
I think a great example is how multinational beverage company Coca-Cola used AI to create the “Masterpiece ad” in 2023. Although the company collaborated with some contemporary artists — like Wonderbuhle, Aket, F. Ramadan, S. Tejada, and V. Kushwah — and used some live action shots in the video, its use of AI-powered image generation and motion synthesis played a key role in creating fluid transitions between the painting and the real world.
The result? A video that sparked global conversations and drove engagement, highlighting how forward-thinking brands can stay relevant in a digital space that is fast evolving by using AI to push the boundaries of creativity.
Pro tip: If you’re looking to start leveraging AI in your marketing strategies and are unsure of where or how to start, check out HubSpot’s AI Sales and Marketing tools to help improve your team’s performance.
2. Analytics
One of AI’s biggest selling points is its ability to comb through vast amounts of data and provide insights relevant to your needs. It’s like it promises to find the proverbial needle in the haystack in 30 seconds flat. This makes it possible for companies to consider big data in real time and provide predictions that can inform decisions.
AI-powered analytics are transforming industries across the board. From retail to finance, banking and more, all kinds of businesses are now using AI to analyze the behaviors of their customers and what drives those behaviors. And that helps these businesses to create more tailored solutions that effectively serve customer needs.
Examples of AI Analytics
Did you know 80% of what we watch on Netflix are suggestions provided based on its analysis of individual watch history?
According to Netflix, this highly personalized recommendation engine saves the streaming company from losing at least $1 billion every year. The model continuously learns from user behavior, watch history, and engagement patterns, refining its recommendations to keep subscribers hooked.
But Netflix isn’t alone.
I love how Marks & Spencer (M&S) has implemented AI technology to enhance its online shopping experience by offering personalized style advice. Customers could complete a quiz detailing their size and style preferences, and the AI system, combined with insights from in-house stylists, provided tailored outfit suggestions.
This initiative led to significant engagement, with 450,000 shoppers using the feature. In addition, M&S further increased automation of product descriptions to 80%, aiming to boost its digital fashion sales to 50% by 2028, up from one-third at the time.
Pro tip: To maximize AI-driven analytics, focus on clean and structured data — even the most advanced AI models need high-quality inputs to deliver valuable insights.
3. Operations
Operations form the backbone of any business, and AI is proving to be a game-changer in this domain by automating repetitive tasks and optimizing complex processes. In manufacturing, for example, AI-powered robotic process automation (RPA) handles tasks like assembly, quality control, and inventory management.
In fact, installations of industrial robots were at an all time high (the second highest in history) as of 2023, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
Beyond retail and manufacturing, AI-driven process automation is helping businesses optimize scheduling, streamline logistics, and improve operational resilience — allowing companies to do more with less.
Example of AI in Operations
I think Walmart’s AI-and-machine learning-driven inventory management systems is a brilliant use case of AI operations. It focuses on demand forecasting, reducing understock and overstock situations by at least 35%. That is millions of dollars saved every year!
Pro tip: AI works best in operations when paired with human oversight. The key is to automate the repetitive while keeping decision-making in human hands.
4. Customer Service and Support
And then there’s the belle of the ball — the customers and how they are supported throughout their journey. Customers want faster and more personalized service, and integrating AI always gets this job done.
Our State of Service report found that:
- 84% of customer support reps see AI as an instrumental tool for interacting with modern customers.
- 92% say that AI has improved their customer service response times.
- 77% believe that AI will handle most ticket resolutions by 2025.
Beyond chatbots, AI-powered sentiment analysis also allows businesses to detect customer frustrations in real time, prompting human agents to step in when necessary. This hybrid model — where AI handles the routine while humans focus on complex cases — ensures efficiency without losing the human touch.
As previously mentioned, AI moves customer service from the rote, tiring processes to the creative problem-solving customers will appreciate more.
Example of AI in Customer Support
One of AI’s biggest strengths that companies love is the ability to deliver personalized experience. Amazon decided to introduce algorithms in purchase recommendations and saw customer loyalty rise by 5%, boosting profits by at least 25% and as high as 95%.
By analyzing user behavior, AI tailors product recommendations to individual preferences, enhancing the customer experience and driving sales.
How AI Will Impact Business in the Future
1. AI will enable you to obsess over your customers.
While most businesses recognize the value of effective customer relationships, not many have been able to tap into the customer data within their business architecture to actually build the solutions that their customers are looking for. According to a report by PwC, only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs.
But AI is now stepping in to help business leaders combat the crisis of disconnection they face when it comes to really understanding customer needs. In 2023, our research found a whopping 63% of business professionals feel AI already helps their employees understand their customers better.
Today, much hasn’t changed, with another report in 2024 showing that 77% of customer experience teams already use AI with great results — including improved customer service response time, improved customer satisfaction (CSAT), and lower spend on customer service.
It’s not hard to see why this is the case, especially when you consider that AI can help you pull data from disparate sources into one single source of truth and glean unique insights about your customers that you otherwise might have missed.
But most importantly, in my opinion, it gives you the time to obsess over your customers again.
It gives your sales team time to genuinely connect with customers and work with them to identify how your products can solve for their unique needs. It gives your support team the ability to focus on complex customer challenges rather than being bogged down by tickets that could be answered by a chatbot.
AI also gives your leaders the insights they need to make more high-impact, powerful decisions that align with what matters most to your customers.
2. AI will automate data analysis for better decision-making.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of any leader’s job is wrangling the right data. It can take hours for a business leader, analyst, or marketer to analyze customer data and uncover meaningful insights, leaving less time to actually use it to make critical decisions. Not to mention, a manual data analysis process is inherently prone to human error.
Fortunately, predictive analytics — which uses machine learning algorithms, data mining, and statistical techniques to analyze large amounts of data and make powerful predictions about future trends or behaviors — can help streamline and supercharge your analytics processes.
One of the major predictions at the 2024 Dubai Future Forum was that we would see the first AI board member of a Fortune 500 company, with Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, telling me in an interview that AI could supercharge decisions in the C-Suite.
There are three main benefits to leveraging AI for data analysis and decision-making:
- AI algorithms can discover patterns that might not be obvious to humans.
- AI can learn from your data and improve its predictions over time.
- You don’t have to do it yourself.
In my view, smarter data ultimately means a more personalized customer experience. Truly understanding your customer data helps you improve how you engage with each individual prospect.
Additionally, predictive analytics can help each organization expand its reach. Sales leaders, for instance, can leverage AI-based insights to formulate reports, develop key account strategies, and build more powerful forecasts on their pipelines.
Among the leaders we surveyed in our report, one-fourth reported the biggest benefit of AI is its ability to enable their employees to make better data-driven decisions. AI has already become an indispensable part of many businesses’ reporting and analytics processes, and I see that role only growing.
3. AI will reduce business costs and improve efficiency.
In today’s difficult economic climate, business leaders need to do more with less.
There are innumerable ways AI can help your business save money — 42% of companies using AI have been able to reduce costs across various business functions, according to one 2024 AI adoption snapshot by Vention.
For one, it will continue to help automate time-consuming, manual tasks. For instance, many customer support reps need to spend extensive time responding to recurring questions from customers. By leveraging AI, you can automate responses to commonly asked questions, which frees up your support reps for more complex issues.
Additionally, you can leverage AI for predictive maintenance. Run or work at a business that uses lots of equipment or machinery? AI can help businesses predict equipment failures so you can schedule maintenance before a breakdown, minimizing repair costs. Dealing with inventory issues? AI could help predict when or if inventory is running high or low to help prevent excess storage costs or other business waste.
In 2023, AI was already saving the average employee a little over 2 hours per day. And, per a report by Thomson Reuters, AI will save professionals up to 12 hours per week by 2029, with 4 hours per week saved in 2025 alone.
With all that extra time, your business and employees can scale a stronger human connection. Ultimately, I think AI will improve efficiencies across the business — all while enhancing the customer experience.
4. Business leaders will invest in new hires specifically trained in AI.
So the question on everyone’s mind is: Is AI going to steal my job?
The short answer: no. AI is more likely to optimize the impact of existing roles and create room for additional hiring opportunities.
On Google Trends, the term “prompt engineer” — which was practically non-existent at the start of 2023 — has risen rapidly, hitting peak popularity in April of the same year.
And our 2023 AI survey found that 66% of business leaders have already hired a new employee specifically to help with leveraging and implementing AI.
This number will only continue to increase. For instance, a 2024 study by Microsoft and LinkedIn’s Work Trend Index revealed that 66% of business leaders say they would not hire someone without AI skills.
At HubSpot, we’ve created dedicated task forces across departments with the specific purpose of identifying how we should implement AI into our current processes across the organization.
Other businesses will do the same — either identifying internal employees who can focus on AI for their business or hiring new AI experts or consultants to fill that need.
5. AI can help businesses detect fraud.
Another benefit of AI? It will make fraud detection easier for businesses of all sizes.
In 2023, 80% of businesses were victims of fraudulent attacks or attempts.
Fraud can be detrimental financially and legally for any business. It is also increasingly challenging to detect as it becomes more sophisticated.
In 2024, businesses increasingly leveraged AI tools to detect and deter fraudulent activity. This is a trend that’s expected to continue this year. AI can point out anomalies in data, such as unusual spending behavior, which helps your employees identify potential fraudsters.
Additionally, AI can use data to make predictions on the likelihood that a particular transaction is fraudulent. Over time, AI algorithms will become better at detecting fraudulent activity, such as suspicious logins, odd transactions based on consumer behavior, or identity theft.
Companies like Certif-ID, Sygnia, and Riskified are already using AI to detect and stop fraud. The trends, according to experts, suggest that AI-powered threat detection capabilities aren’t going to slow down in 2025.
6. AI will help businesses build better products.
In the future, we’ll also begin to see business leaders leverage AI to uncover new product opportunities.
For instance, software engineers can use AI tools to sift through feedback, engagement, or other product usage data to determine which features they should improve on an existing product or discover new products or AI business ideas based on gaps in their offerings.
But it goes beyond that. AI algorithms can also help you design your product.
Yep — you heard that right. AI will be able to analyze data on customer usage patterns, feedback, and preferences to provide you with invaluable insights necessary to create more user-friendly, engaging, effective products for your customers.
It will also help you speed up the product development process start-to-finish with rapid prototyping. AI algorithms can seamlessly and instantly provide different design options, so your team can quickly identify the most promising option and iterate in real-time.
Did you know? HubSpot has integrated Breeze AI throughout our offerings to improve your experience and enhance our tools’ performance.
The Potential Dangers of AI in Business
Now, to the other side of the coin. While I think AI has numerous benefits, I think we should also be aware of the problems that may arise.
1. Losing the Human Touch
Yes, AI will respond to 1,000 times more support tickets than a human agent within the same time frame, but not every customer appreciates this.
For all its benefits, some consumers have a more negative opinion of companies that use AI instead of humans for customer service, and 77% think AI doesn’t understand the nuances of their requests as well as human representatives.
This, among many things, highlights the importance of balancing AI efficiency with human interaction to maintain brand perception.
2. Job Uncertainty
One week, you’re confident of the 5-year career plan you have mapped out, and by the next week, you’re looking up Will Robots Take My Job? to confirm if there’s anything to plan for.
By 2025, the World Economic Forum predicted that at least 800 manufacturing roles would be done by robots, and up to 20 million such jobs should be expected worldwide by 2030. And it’s not just in manufacturing.
In our State of AI in Marketing report, 40% of marketers surveyed feel like AI has already had a negative impact on their career trajectory. Another 46% feel that AI will replace all humans in the workplace at some point in the future.
Additionally, the rapid advancement of AI technologies has created a skills gap, with many workers lacking the necessary training to operate or collaborate with AI systems effectively.
3. Ethical Concerns
Bias in algorithms and data privacy risks are just some of the many ethical concerns the integration of AI in business triggers. Studies have shown that up to 38.6% of the “facts” used by AI systems can be biased, leading to unfair outcomes.
Also, AI is data-hungry, meaning that sometimes, it requires more (and some more) data. This extensive process could raise concerns about the privacy and security of sensitive information. Improper handling of the data can lead to not just misuse but also data breaches, which can have astronomical financial and reputational consequences.
Preparing for an Era of AI Disruption
AI is poised to disrupt virtually every industry. But it’s not something we need to fear.
As D-ID CEO Gil Perry notes, “The biggest risk in disrupting an industry is that you’re not following the safe, incremental path — you’re betting big, often against the current market trends. Success requires conviction, but also resilience when things don’t go as planned.”
The key to long-term growth and success is to evolve quickly with AI and accept it’s here to stay. For Perry, that means staying close to your users, adapting to feedback and data, and letting the market shape your growth. “Ethics matter too. Building trust among the ecosystem and your customers is incremental,” he adds.
In the early stages of AI, you’ll want to remain focused on your highest priorities and how your business can get the most out of AI. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use AI, dive into our AI learning path or download the offer below.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.