Nearly all ANZ enterprises embracing AI agents: report

Nearly all (97%) Australian and New Zealand enterprises are planning to expand their use of AI agents in the next 12 months, new research from Cloudera indicates.

A survey into the use of agentic AI found that 91% of respondents from the two countries believe investing in AI agents is critical to maintain a competitive edge, and 89% believe their prior investments in generative AI have prepared them well to implement the technology.

The leading use cases for AI agents across ANZ vary by industry, with the finance and insurance sector aiming to use the technology to improve risk assessment (59%), fraud detection (41%) and portfolio management (41%).

In manufacturing, top applications include quality control (48%), inventory management (42%) and process automation (39%), while in healthcare the most common use cases include diagnostic assistance (52%), appointment scheduling (48%) and care coordination (43%).

Finally, the telecom sector is aiming to leverage the technology to improve the customer experience (50%), infrastructure maintenance (50%), performance monitoring (50%), and security monitoring (50%).

But the research also found that ANZ enterprises have lingering concerns about the use of agentic AI, with the main hold-ups being concerns over AI bias (69%), data privacy (54%), and lack of expertise (38%).

Cloudera VP for Australia and New Zealand Keir Garrett said AI agents have the potential to transform the operational landscape of ANZ organisations.

“Their ability to think, act and adapt at speed doesn’t just make processes better, they open up endless opportunities for innovation, smarter data-driven decisions and achieving faster results. But of course, we need guardrails in place,” she said.

Image credit: iStock.com/WANAN YOSSINGKUM