Ready or not, enterprises are betting on AI

This has been a big week for AI companies signing enterprise deals, with Zendesk unveiling new AI agents that should be able to solve 80% of customer service problems, Anthropic and IBM announcing a strategic partnership, and Deloitte announcing a deal with Anthropic. Additionally, Google announced a new AI platform for business.

This does not mean that it will be smooth sailing for large organizations using AI. In fact, the timing of Deloitte’s announcement was a bit awkward, coming on the same day that Australia’s Department of Employment and Labor Relations said the professional services and consulting firm would have to pay money to submit a report to management that included what appeared to be a number of AI-generated hallucinations.

In the latest episode of the Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosek, Sean O’Kane, and I discuss the latest AI headlines, comparing them to last week’s news about the new Sora app. While AI companies may eventually make real money from consumer social networking apps, enterprise deals offer a more direct path to significant revenue.

You can read a preview of our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, below.

Anthony: I think this actually ties into our discussion last week about some GenAI social networks. We’ve been framing this as a potential way for these AI companies to eventually make money, which I think is certainly the case, but there’s a long way to get there. And the project, sometimes people don’t find it as interesting or interesting as the consumer, [but] It’s actually where the real money is.

Sora may be how OpenAI will make money five years from now, but this is how these companies will make money now.

And Deloitte [news] It was particularly eye-catching. Sometimes it may feel like a little broken record just to point out how these models work [aren’t always] Totally prepared for prime time, but I find it encouraging that the Australian government has actually responded and said, no, you can’t do that.

It’s not necessary that no one uses AI to generate these types of reports, although I think you could make that argument. But if you’re going to do that, you have to be responsible for the output. You have to actually go through and make sure that the information mentioned is real. You can’t feed it in a form and only [say] “Okay, my job is done, these hours will be billable no matter what.” I think anyone who does that should be embarrassed and fined.

Kirsten: definitely. Sean, Zendesk also had an announcement this week, and they’re actually creating these tools that will handle almost all of their customer service, essentially removing the human from the process. In your daily life [life]how you get around in the world or how automakers approach servicing, for example, are you starting to see this kind of [automation] infiltration?

Shawn: Yes, I’ve already written about that several times. There are a bunch of different startups developing complete customer service suites, voice agents, and LLMs for emails and texts. [from] Agents and service centers. Actually, I think that’s a worthwhile idea, because the problem here is not: we don’t have enough people to do these jobs, and that will drive them out of their jobs. It’s that you can never contact someone on the phone otherwise you’re moving around.

Especially when you go to the service, you are returned to the service department. Everyone is busy. So, if you can capture it accurately and make it easy for people to respond, the question for me is to what extent will these companies adopt it and stick with it. There have been all kinds of technologies over the years, like web forms and things like that, where these agents did this, but then they forgot about it. And then you put it on their website and you think it’s going to work, and then it doesn’t, because they just want you to contact them.

So I have some optimism and some hope that things like this will actually be the first point of contact for people [a business]. And it looks like we’re about to find out.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Teresa LoConsolo, published every Wednesday and Friday.

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