Through 2027, Generative AI (Gen AI) and artificial intelligence agent use will create the first true challenge to mainstream productivity tools in 30 years, prompting a $58- billion market shakeup, a recent Gartner report has said.
The tech research and advisory firm expects organisations to increasingly shift everyday work to AI-driven workflows, reducing the reliance on legacy software formats that have long shaped how productivity applications are designed and sold.
“Legacy formats and compatibility will decline in importance, reducing barriers to entry and resulting in new competition from a wide array of vendors,” Gartner said in a release.
The cost and packaging of common Gen AI features will also shift, with some currently paid capabilities likely to move into free tiers, making no-cost AI tools viable for broader use, it said.
Hiring to test for AI fluency
The research firm has come out with nine other broader talent and workforce effects.
By 2027, around 75 percent of hiring processes are expected to include assessments and certifications for workplace AI proficiency, as organisations look for measurable productivity gains from employees who can apply generative AI effectively.
At the same time, reliance on AI output is expected to trigger concerns over declining independent reasoning.
Through 2026, half of global organisations are projected to introduce “AI-free” assessments to evaluate critical thinking and judgment without AI assistance.
AI platforms to split by region
Gartner also expects AI adoption to diverge across regions.
By 2027, 35 percent of countries may be locked into region-specific AI platforms that use proprietary contextual data to meet regulatory and cultural requirements.
Multinational firms will have to support multiple AI systems and compliance standards across markets.
Customer and B2B buying to automate
Customer interactions and procurement models are set to be reshaped as well.
By 2028, organisations that adopt multi-agent AI across most customer-facing processes are expected to gain a clear competitive advantage.
Gartner forecasts that 90 percent of business to business buying will be intermediated by AI agents by 2028, pushing more than $15 trillion in B2B spend through automated agent exchanges.
Legal and compliance risks rise
However, the shift toward AI-driven decision systems comes with rising legal and operational risks. By the end of 2026, “death by AI” legal claims tied to AI-related safety or decision failures are projected to exceed 1,000.
At the regulatory level, fragmented AI oversight is expected to expand to cover half of the global economy by 2027, driving around $5 billion in compliance investments.
Programmable money gains momentum
Gartner expects programmable financial transactions to gain traction, as AI agents act as machine customers. By 2030, 22 percent of monetary transactions could embed terms and conditional logic to enable autonomous negotiation and payment.
Gartner said as AI usage scales across workflows, CIOs should prioritise preparing organisations for behavioural shifts, not just tooling changes, to maintain competitive performance.
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