Roughly 80% of chief marketing officers are planning to increase their organization’s spending on artificial intelligence and data for 2024, according to a new survey from Accenture. This number is up from 57% last year.

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Generative AI is expected to account for a major part of this spending. The surveyed CMOs cited two areas of business that will be priorities in receiving generative AI investment: customer service, in which 64% of respondents plan to invest, and marketing, in which 47% of respondents plan to invest.

Customer service has so far been one of the more obvious applications for generative AI thanks to the rise of chatbots. These assistants can help customers with a range of specific issues, and in a conversational way. E-commerce brands in particular could benefit from such technology, given that Gen Z appears ready to embrace AI-powered shopping.

As for marketing, brands have had a slightly more difficult time determining how to effectively apply generative AI. Plenty of tools can help in generating creative material such as ad copy, but the outputs almost always need to be pruned before being published. Brands including Coca-Cola are at the forefront of using the technology in their marketing, but consumers may not be as eager to receive this material as previously thought. 

Accenture’s survey is part of a quarterly effort to gauge C-suite sentiment on key issues. For this study, 2,207 C-suite executives, including chief executive officers (CEOs), chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) were surveyed in September.

CMOs are also looking at ways that generative AI can improve internal operations. Just over 70% said that generative AI is enhancing the skills of its workforce, and 66% said the technology is creating a need for new technical skills. These include knowledge in AI training, industry AI value strategy and data science.

An advantage for CMOs going into 2024 is that much of their staff is already familiar with AI, which was not the case a year ago. Roughly 70% of surveyed CMOs have provided training on effective uses of generative AI, and 41% provided on-the-job training for workers as they go. 

As such, CMOs are looking to bolster AI skill sets in 2024. Half of the respondents (50%) said they will look to academic partnerships to provide such education, and 40% will continue to provide their own training to adapt to new ways of working with AI. 

The top challenges around generative AI with which CMOs are dealing are data strategy, talent and cloud infrastructure, per the survey.