'The South African Generative AI Roadmap 2025' report shows that the number of medium-sized and large companies experimenting with generative AI (GenAI) technologies in their environments has fallen to 35% from 53% in the previous year's report, and that the percentage of companies using it regularly increased to 35% from 13% in 2024.

Most of these regular users were accessing GenAI through online platforms, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Co-Pilot and DeepSeek, although a small proportion were using these technologies through public cloud services and on-premise applications, said technology market research and strategy company World Wide Worx CEO Arthur Goldstuck on July 17.

The report, which surveyed more than 100 medium-sized and large enterprises across industry sectors, showed that GenAI adoption had climbed to 67% of large enterprises actively using it this year, up from 45% in 2024.

“This dramatic rise positions GenAI as the fastest-moving digital trend in the country. However, organisations must take the foundational steps of planning and governance, which will more clearly connect AI to people and processes, and help organisations reap genuine, sustaining return on investments,” he recommended.

The companies surveyed were nearly unanimous in using GenAI for specific tasks, with 66% of respondents in the 2025 survey using GenAI for text or written content and the remaining 34% of respondents planning to use it. This was up from 33% using it for text in the 2024 report, he noted.

Similarly, 36% of respondents were using GenAI for code generation, up from 24% in 2024, with 58% planning to use it for code generation, while 6% were not using and were not planning to use GenAI for code generation.

However, there were significant changes in the types of uses of GenAI by companies in the 2025 report, with GenAI being increasingly used for machine learning and predictive analytics, with video and audio content creation dropping off dramatically in use from 2024.

Specifically, 60% of respondents said they used GenAI for predictive analytics and the remaining 40% said they planned to do so, and 48% were using GenAI for machine learning purposes, and with 52% planning to deploy it for machine learning.

Additionally, the survey showed that 37% of respondents said they were using GenAI to boost logistics effectiveness, up from 24% in the prior year's report.

“The use of GenAI in logistics will probably continue rising, as companies discover the benefits of AI in supply chains,” said Goldstuck.

Further, in terms of the impact being sought by deploying GenAI in companies, respondents had changed their views, with 51% being very positive about the impact of GenAI's use on their competitiveness.

This was in contrast to the 2024 results, in which 67% of companies were very positive about the impact of GenAI's use on their productivity.

Productivity remained central to the impact of GenAI deployments in the 2025 report, with an identical 51% responding that they were very positive about GenAI's impact on productivity.

The view that GenAI would boost companies' logistics retained its fourth place in ranking of importance compared with the prior year.

However, the impact of the use of GenAI on improving customer service saw a significant increase, with 37% being very positive about GenAI's impact and a further 29% responding that they were positive about GenAI's impact on boosting customer service, Goldstuck pointed out.

Meanwhile, 14% of respondents said they had a clearly defined strategy for integrating GenAI into their business operations and a further 22% said they had a clearly defined strategy for the use of GenAI in certain areas of their businesses.

“Therefore, about 45% of enterprises have a clearly defined strategy or are developing one, but 34% do not have a strategy and are not developing one. This represents a significant gap for GenAI in South Africa,” he said.

The 2024 report concluded that GenAI had shifted from being a concept to being a reality, as enterprises embraced it as a catalyst for innovation and growth. This year's report showed the multiple use cases of GenAI, but also signalled that the market was heading for maturity, said Goldstuck.

“The next stage of the [GenAI in enterprises] journey is the growing maturity of GenAI use cases. However, the lack of strategy remains a barrier to achieving that maturity,” he said.

Meanwhile, IT equipment and services company Dell Technologies South Africa data centre specialist sales director Tony Bartlett said there was a strong uptick in interest in the use of GenAI to support digital twin solutions.

Further, he added that mines and farms were using GenAI in their backend systems, in conjunction with data collected by drones, to boost security and yields and to reduce risks.

Dell and IT components and equipment manufacturer Intel were partners of the World Wide Worx study.