Generative AI (Gen AI) could reach nearly $24 billion annually in the Middle East region by 2030, according to a report from consulting firm Strategy&.
Gen AI’s biggest impact is expected to be in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where the industry could see combined annual growth of $17.5 billion over the next few years. Other GCC countries are also expected to benefit greatly. Estimated economic benefits are expected to be approximately $2.6 billion in Qatar, $1.6 billion in Kuwait, $1.3 billion in Oman, and $600 million in Bahrain.
“Given this expected impact and the accelerating progress of new generation AI, Middle East executives should seize this opportunity without delay. Forward-thinking companies that adopt AI are poised to gain a significant competitive advantage,” said Tony Cullum, Partner at Strategy&.
The media and entertainment industry is likely to be the most affected industry, with a potential impact of approximately $8.5 billion across the GCC region. This was followed by healthcare with $3.8 billion, banking and financial services with $3.5 billion, and telecommunications with $2.9 billion.
Generative AI has become a hot topic in various industries around the world. As AI tools help reduce the drudgery of employees through automation, there are concerns that some sectors will become redundant. Thanks to this technology, global GDP is expected to increase by about 14% in 2030, according to Strategy&.
All this growth is expected from Gen AI, but it is still a new and emerging technology. Many companies are hedging their bets on AI despite risks and dangers such as deepfakes, privacy concerns, harmful content, and bias in the way algorithms operate. In addition to ethical concerns, organizations will also have to deal with accompanying regulations that are already beginning to take shape. For that, The EU’s so-called “AI law”first introduced in 2021, but not yet fully implemented.
“Gen AI is more than just an advanced chatbot. These large-scale language models (LLMs) are trained on large-scale text data, and more recently multimodal data, to generate, edit, summarize, translate, classify, and more. It performs a large number of language tasks. The ability to fine-tune LLM for specific applications is a compelling benefit,” said Karam.
previous report Research from another consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, shows that AI, in its many forms, can be applied to a dizzying array of applications in nearly every industry, increasing global productivity by up to $4 trillion a year. This is a truly astonishing number.
“Doing nothing is not a realistic option. It is easy to dismiss much of what is said about AI as hype. But as our analysis highlights, Without action, many established companies, and even entire business models, are at risk of becoming obsolete,” the Strategy& report warns.
