Level of autonomy accorded to agentic AI must be carefully considered: forecast

While the conversational/generative/agentic AI sectors are predicted to be high growth areas, one market research firm has sounded some warning alarms

Since 2022, conversational AI (as defined by Forbes) has gained significant momentum with the rise of generative AI chatbots, and enterprise demand for this technology has also grown.

With this in mind, based on five years of its own research dataset on the conversational AI landscape, a market intelligence and advisory firm has published a growth forecast for 2025 to 2029.

First, based on their data, global revenue from conversational AI services will grow from US$14.6bn in 2025 to more than US$23bn by 2027. While conversational AI technology already existed prior to the maturity of large language models, the use of conversational AI alongside generative AI is expected to boost enterprise capabilities in automate a larger proportion of customer conversations, while interacting in a more natural way.

Second, revenue originating from enterprise spend on conversational AI platforms will be driven by the benefits of implementing agentic AI to services, according to the forecast. Agentic AI is a subset of AI that enables solutions to act independently to attain a preset objective, whilst learning from previous interactions. Specifically, agentic AI enables enterprises to automate tasks such as service enquiries and appointment scheduling over conversational channels; reducing reliance of human agent intervention.

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Third, the firm is using its forecasts to urge “conversational AI vendors to integrate agentic AI into their communications technology stack” and create “enterprise solutions that automate customer interactions across messaging channels. However, to allow agentic AI to manage these interactions across the complete customer journey, integration with business support systems where customer data is stored is essential.”

Fourth, the forecast warns that “the level of autonomy given to agentic AI must be carefully considered, with human oversight of actions a necessity during early-stage implementations.

According to analyst Molly Gatford, Juniper Research, the firm that disclosed its predictions in payable and free (truncated) reports: “Issues around liability arising from hallucinations or erroneous communications must be avoided before enterprises’ trust in agentic AI can be established. This will best position conversational AI vendors to capitalize on this substantial revenue growth over the next three years.”