Artificial intelligence, commonly referred to as AI, continues to be the biggest buzz term in technology, with Google revealing that South Africans are searching more about the term, while also looking to boost their knowledge about the tech.
On Thursday, the world’s largest internet search company said AI was searched more than ever in 2024 globally, with SA users searching for the term 120% more than this time last year.
Searches for “what is AI?” also increased by 20%, while searches for “how to use AI” increased 70% in SA. These trends were measured from January 1 to July 15 2024. All percentage increases are in comparison to January 1 to July 15, 2023.
AI investment grew exponentially in 2023, driven by the rapid adoption and popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT since it was launched in November 2022. Technology companies have since sought to capitalise on the trend through AI-backed services or software platforms, with others benefiting from growing hardware demand to power these systems.
Important in the growth of AI interest has been the accessibility offered by platforms such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft CoPilot to ordinary people. Until 2022, the ability to use such cutting edge technology had been limited to technology insiders, or businesses looking to invest in the area.
Google, for example, began working on AI in 2012, first by training computers to recognise cats on YouTube.
“We released TensorFlow in 2015, our internal machine learning and AI software library. In 2016 we published our AI Principles for the first time: our public outlining of how we pursue AI boldly, responsibly and collaboratively — as well as AlphaGo and Transformer,” the company says.
The Alphabet subsidiary also showed that South Africans were looking to use AI to build their careers and creativity, with trending searches including “AI image generator”, “AI writer”, “online AI chat” and “logo maker AI”. According to Google, these were all “breakout” searches in 2024, growing more than 5,000% in interest since this time last year.
In addition, the research also showed that people in SA were keen to grow their AI skills and qualifications.
Searches for “AI jobs” and “AI course” nearly doubled, growing by 80% in each case. Searches for “AI and business” more than doubled, while those for “AI and start-ups” increased by 30%.
“AI has the potential to create opportunities — from the extraordinary to the everyday — for everyone: bringing new waves of innovation, social and economic progress,” said Paul Mayanja, acting Google SA country director.
“So it’s no surprise that the people of SA are already looking to make the most of this transformational technology — finding ways to learn more AI skills to boost their career, creativity, and society.”
While many businesses remain bullish about AI, the business case, for some, has yet to be proven. As such, fears of AI continue to swirl. Two weeks ago, global markets saw a big sell-off of tech stocks on fears of an AI bubble, taking down major technology players in public markets.
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