The state of artificial intelligence in 5 charts - Digiday

Artificial intelligence is hot right now: IBM, Google and Facebook are all competing to push the boundaries of AI, while big agencies like MDC, Huge, GroupM and Team One are rushing out bot services. The global market for smart machines -- hardware or software systems that can accomplish a specific task -- is estimated to increase from $7.4 billion this year to around $15 billion in 2021, at a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent, according to BCC Research. Forrester predicts that insight-driven businesses will pull in around $1.2 trillion in 2020 from over $250 billion last year, while CB Insights' research confirms that funding for AI has been growing. "AI is growing because there are real, legacy business problems that current technologies and processes have been unable to solve for," said Amy Inlow, CMO of AI firm Adgorithms. "One problem in marketing, for example, is the inability to process mass amounts of data and subsequently act on it in real time without relying on a team of marketers to analyze and make decisions."