How using genAI to fuse creativity and technology could reshape the way we work

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.

Author: Chris Hamill-Stewart, Writer, Forum Agenda, Spencer Feingold, Digital Editor, World Economic Forum

• GenAI could transform as much as 40% of people’s working hours in certain jobs performed across modern industries like telecommunications and media.
• Some companies are already using genAI tools to support their employees, while also improving their businesses.
• Supporting genAI use through process redesign, skill investment and cultural change could boost productivity and innovation even more, while also empowering employees to redefine how they work.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the fusion of creativity and technology is reshaping how we work like never before. Within the telecommunications, media and entertainment industries, people are already using generative artificial intelligence (genAI) to transform their jobs and reinvent business.

In fact, genAI could transform 40% of total work time, according to recent research by the World Economic Forum and Accenture that assessed the impact genAI – specifically large language models (LLMs) – could have on jobs. The effects would be focussed on jobs that require critical thinking, problem solving and creativity.

Our joint white paper provides an analysis of over 19,000 individual tasks across 867 occupations, assessing the potential exposure of each task to LLM adoption. The paper classifies these tasks into those with high potential for automation, high potential for augmentation, low potential for either, or that are are unaffected (non-language tasks).

Our findings align with other major studies that take a wider view on the subject. For example, the ILO estimates that 6% of developed country employment will be affected by genAI, while academic research has found that LLMs could affect at least 10% of the tasks completed by about 80% of the US workforce.

GenAI is a powerful tool that could place employees at the forefront of innovation, enabling them to create value while also enhancing their roles. By using genAI responsibly to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, generate creative content and advise as an intelligent co-pilot, these employees can redirect their efforts toward more strategic and high-impact activities.

This should boost professional growth and job satisfaction while allowing people to increase their productivity and expand the reach of their own capabilities. These advances in AI will also create new roles and tasks for people, transforming how work gets done.

The following examples from telecommunications and media industry leaders demonstrate the value genAI can deliver to businesses and their employees.

Telecommunications: user experience

Telefónica Brazil or Vivo, a large telecommunications company, is integrating a genAI solution that helps its agents respond faster to network tower landlords’ queries about property rental contracts.

The application quickly reads landlords’ queries and proposes a set of actions to help fulfill requests, reducing the time it takes agents to respond. It also structures the response with a set of relevant answers to increase the response quality and help ensure all queries are answered in a helpful manner.

The solution has already improved agent response time by 30% and increased the company’s user experience score by 66%.

Media: advertising and content creation

Technologists at Zee, a major Asian media conglomerate, are using genAI to drive innovation in advertising and content creation processes.

Small- and medium-sized businesses are often unable to afford agency costs and find the ad creation process highly complex and cost prohibitive. Some also struggle with finding the right audience to target in a cost-efficient way. Zee has created a self-serve advertising platform to help such businesses use genAI to build ad campaigns and publish on various platforms in a highly simplified way.

These examples reflect expectations from our white paper about how companies will use genAI. Within the telecommunications industry, we found that approximately 65% of customer service and sales representatives’ work time is touched by LLMs in some way. This enables them to simultaneously increase customer satisfaction and improve their efficiency – as explored by Accenture technology leaders Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson in Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future.

Likewise, marketing analysts and specialists working in media already have almost 70% of their work time exposed to LLMs. If companies support the deployment of genAI tools through process redesign, skill investment and cultural shifts, it could further boost productivity and innovation. It could also empower workers to use genAI to redefine how work is done across the value chain.

Telefónica Brazil and Zee show how genAI could transform industries. Indeed, genAI is not just a tool for today, it’s a foundation for tomorrow. Its potential to reshape industries and enhance human creativity will be key to driving growth, creativity and sustainable innovation across industries.