Generative AI is coming. Accenture is one of the companies that is bringing it across industries, in response to client interest. Accenture will be setting up nine AI studios across Asia Pacific and Latin America, which includes Australia, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Philippines and Singapore.

Studios in these countries will be connected with data and AI experts from Accenture, and ecosystem partners, ventures, and investments to allow them to experiment on the technology, co-create and scale, using the GenAI solutions by Accenture's AI framework.

“Clients today are ready to move beyond proof of concepts and into production to tackle more complex business problems across their value chain. They also recognize that generative AI introduces new, unique risks that need consideration and mitigation,” said Leo Framil, CEO of Accenture growth markets. “Drawing on our experience of client conversations, existing projects, our rich talent and industry partnerships, our generative AI Studios will provide enterprises with the best ideas and capabilities to shape tailor made solutions and help them reinvent their business, responsibly.”

According to a recent Accenture survey, 77% of the C-suite in APAC plan to increase their AI-related spending in 2024 as companies move from proof of concept to customizing foundation models with proprietary data.  84% of the C-suite in LATAM plan to do the same.

“Harnessing the true potential of generative AI lies in going deeper, and building a strong data strategy, anchored in a digital core including a modern cloud and ERP infrastructure, and mature data and AI capabilities,” said Vivek Luthra, data and AI lead for Accenture growth markets. “Our generative AI Studios strengthen our existing investments in data and AI to provide our clients with a full spectrum of capabilities to build and scale AI to improve productivity and drive growth.”

According to Accenture's press release, "The studios will cater to a wide range of industry and functional needs, but each will also specialize in one or more industries including banking, insurance, telecommunications, public sector, manufacturing, renewable energy, chemicals and mining. The studios will be operational in January 2024, except in Argentina and Mexico which will join the network later this year."

Last year when Accenture held an event that revolved around GenAI, they emphasized that AI will not replace human workers. Instead, job descriptions will change and they are expecting a surge of prompt engineers -- people specializing in creating prompts, descriptions for AI to base their generated output. 

For example, for advertising companies, a prompt engineer can have AI generate a copy for an ad they are working on, and within seconds the higher ups have dozens to choose from. The same goes with graphic design, AI can just generate an image, thanks to prompt engineers. 

Does that mean copywriters and graphic artists, or any other creatives who have been honing their craft for years, should prepare for switching job titles and descriptions? That's an interesting question. Of course the things I mentioned above are just examples.

Accenture claimed that the AI studios are part of their $3 billion investment in data and AI, and part of that includes specialized services to help clients build their own large language models so they build their own custom AI.

The studios are part of Accenture’s $3 billion investment in data and AI. The company also recently announced the launch of specialized services to help clients build their own large language models that are tailored to meet their specific business needs.