A quarter of Brazilian companies currently have at least one use case based on artificial intelligence – in 2024, it was 12% –, according to the 4th edition of Bain & Company’s research on generative AI adoption. The survey also highlights that 67% of organizations in the country consider this technology one of their top five strategic priorities, and for 17%, it is already the main focus of investments.
Lucas Brossi, a partner at Bain, emphasizes the rapid scalability of the technology and that the number of AI use cases has been growing steadily. ‘Generative AI goes beyond a technological innovation; it redefines operational models, drives efficiency gains, and creates new growth possibilities. Current models are trained on increasingly larger datasets, spend more time on inference – with reasoning behavior – and multimodality is advancing at an impressive speed.’
The study points out that companies implementing generative AI have achieved a 14% increase in productivity and a 9% growth in financial results. Additionally, there was a slight increase in the number of organizations in the experimentation phase or those with at least one use case. As expected, the only percentage that dropped (-15%) was that of companies not yet using AI.
Despite the progress, challenges such as technological infrastructure and talent shortages remain the main obstacles to faster implementation, both cited by 39% of respondents. In Brazil, the main applications of generative AI are in productivity tools, software development, finance, and marketing.
Bain’s research highlights that generative AI capabilities have grown at an accelerated pace, while the costs of using LLMs (large language models) have dropped approximately 95% since 2022. This scenario has driven the spread of the technology. ‘First, we saw a wave of implementation with generative AI chatbots. Then came a new phase with co-pilots, which brought more agility to complex tasks. Now, we are entering a third phase, with proactive intelligent agents capable of executing multiple steps to achieve a goal – the so-called Agentic AI,’ Brossi comments on the technology’s evolution.
The use of AI in daily life is also growing among Brazilians: 62% of respondents say they are familiar with AI tools, and 17% use them frequently.
Companies that see generative AI as a driver of transformation are reshaping their strategies and positioning themselves ahead in the race for competitiveness. With the rapid evolution of technology and falling costs, organizations that adopt a proactive approach to integrating these tools into their processes increase their efficiency and create new business opportunities. In the current scenario, it is essential for companies to follow trends to lead change – otherwise, they risk falling behind.
