In 2020 the Italian market ofartificial intelligence grew by 15%, to 300 million euros. This is what emerges from a research byArtificial Intelligence Observatory of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. According to analysts, spending is driven by the software component, which accounts for 62% of the market, against 38% for services.
The analysis also shows that more than half (53%) of medium-large Italian companies activated at least one AI project during 2020. Investments are focused onintelligent data processing (33%), algorithms to analyze and extract information from data, while the initiatives that have grown the most in terms of resources are chatbots and virtual assistants (respectively +10% and +28%).
The majority of Italian consumers (94%) has then heard of AI at least once and has a correct conception of it, linked to the automation of specific tasks (65%), to driving vehicles without human intervention (60%), to the interaction between man and machine (58%) and logical reasoning (40%). Over half (51%) have already used products and services that include artificial intelligence features, mainly voice assistants on the phone (65%), smart speakers for the home (62%) and systems that provide suggestions on e-commerce sites (58%).
“The health crisis hasn't stopped the innovation and growth of the Artificial Intelligence market – he said Alexander Piva, director of the Artificial Intelligence observatory – but he certainly directed its attention to certain types of projects, accelerating the initiatives of Forecasting (estimate of demand), Anomaly Detection (identification of online fraud), Object Detection (such as the recognition of PPE in the images) and even more than Chatbots and Virtual Assistants”.
The results of 2020, he added Nicholas Cats, director of the Artificial Intelligence observatory, allow “to look to 2021 with optimism, just as positive are the efforts at European level to define guidelines that regulate the development of artificial intelligence algorithms. The European Commission has published a white paper that laid the foundations for the protection of consumer rights, while the European Parliament has adopted three resolutions concerning ethical aspects, the issue of civil liability and intellectual property rights relating to robotics and AI . Not binding acts, but it is a first awareness”.
