This article reports the data from the Excelsior Information System surveys on the adoption of AI-related technologies in Italian companies. This integrates the information available at national and European level by examining the diffusion by economic and territorial sectors, which are the main AI applications in companies, as well as the reasons behind the choice not to adopt such technologies. Overall, the Excelsior survey data show higher values in AI adoption than the ones reported in the Second Report on the State of the Digital Decade (4,7%). The adoption rate of AI technologies concerns 11,4% of Italian companies.

Sectors and territories

The application of AI solutions and systems varies depending on the production; in general, service companies (12.6%) show a greater propensity to adopt these technologies compared to manufacturing companies (8.5%). A lower level of AI adoption in the manufacturing sector goes is in line with a greater interest in other emerging technologies, particularly in robotics and connected objects (internet of things).

In terms of territorial distribution, an interesting fact emerges: the share of companies that have decided to adopt AI solutions and systems is the same in the North-West of Italy and in the South and Islands (11.7%), and slightly higher than the national average (11.4%). Companies from Central Regions lag behind (10.6%).

Business processes and applications

With reference to the business processes in which companies declare to have used AI-related technologies, the area of economic and financial management stands out (41.9%). Approximately 35.4% of companies used AI technologies in marketing, digital promotion and e-commerce, followed by customer management (20.6%), management of services and/or production (19.6%) and in R&D (16.8%). On the other hand, the spread of AI in logistics or in the organization and management of human resources is not very significant.

If we look only at companies that use AI in business applications, cybersecurity emerges as the main use case for Italian companies (22.1%). Overall, the most common applications are related to service operations functions, such as document analysis (18.3%), customer optimization and assistance through CRM systems (14.9%), NLP technologies (13.5%), data analysis and forecasting systems (12.7%), process automation (11%).

AI: why not?

It is also interesting to investigate the reasons that lead companies not to adopt AI technologies yet. As clearly emerges, 69.9% of companies declare that they are not aware of the ways to effectively introduce AI solutions and systems in the business environment, while 15.6% believe that such technologies cannot produce significant benefits to their business model. From the perspective of the Excelsior survey, it should be highlighted that high costs represent a problem for only 5.2% of companies and the lack of personnel suitable for using AI technologies only for 2.1%.

You can find all the data regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence systems in Italian companies in the report Competenze Digitali 2024.

Francesco Berni

Unioncamere