Coca-Cola recently appointed Pratik Thakkar as the global head of generative AI. Couple of months ago, Vidyut Naware was also appointed as the head of generative AI centre of excellence at PayPal. 

A few days ago, San Antonio-based multicloud solutions provider, Rackspace Technology appointed its chief technology officer Srini Koushik to global head of the company’s newly launched Foundry for Generative AI. Last month, Mphasis announced a dedicated business unit for generative AI, led by the group CTO Anup Nair. The list just goes on. 

But, one asks why are companies setting up specialised roles to drive generative AI initiatives? Is it really necessary, or are companies jumping into the AI trend by appointing dedicated leaders to drive their vision?

The Rise of Generative AI Leaders 

At the backdrop of Coca-Cola’s Masterpiece ad, it makes sense for the company to elevate Thakkar, who was former head of global creative strategy and content, to take up generative AI global head. In his new role, he would be in charge of leveraging AI technology in creating big ideas and developing marketing strategy across the entire brand and category portfolio of the Coca-Cola Company. 

Meanwhile, Paypal’s head of generative AI centre of excellence is looking into using generative AI for risk assessment, customer service, marketing and automation. On the contrary, Paypal is tackling its slump in customer acquisition since the pandemic, its further woes in the stock market crash. The recovery requires the adoption of new AI technologies as said by Dan Schulman, president of Paypal. 

“We expect AI will allow us to lower costs for years to come. AI, combined with a unique set of data, will drive efficiencies and a set of value propositions. Despite the fact that today’s environment is difficult to forecast, we are positioned to reap the investments in our products into 2024.” he said at a recent earnings conference. Now, the company is going big on generative AI to save the day. 

CTOs Are Enough 

Rackspace Technology and Mphasis, on the other hand, has not created any specialised role for taking care of its generative AI initiatives, and is primarily led by the chief technology officer. 

Last month, Rackspace announced FAIR’s launch, calling the platform “a groundbreaking global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries.” Its offerings include Generative AI – Ideation Workshop, Incubate and Industrialize, which are meant to help organisations identify uses for, integrate and optimise Generative AI.

In 2021, Koushik became the CTO of Rackspace, where he was incharge of the company’s technology strategy and information technology and security. 

Since then, AI development has been a combination of open source projects (Hugging Face and stability AI), use of the resources from the acquisition of AI analytics firm Just Analytics and the development of its own Generative AI,  Intelligent Co-pilot for the Enterprise (ICE), which uses AI to “automate routine tasks, identify warm leads, surface relevant data and content, and provide real-time contextualised analytics for hyper-personalised customer interactions.” 

Mphasis set up a new division known as Mphasis.ai which offers guidance on the integration of generative AI solutions, create proprietary generative AI technologies, provide licences to more than 250 AI models through its ‘Hyperscaler’ solutions platform, and collaborate with 50 startups to assist clients in solution development. The new vertical will also supply clients with conversational AI tools, such as chatbots, to employ in their businesses. Nair who has been the CTO of Mphasis for seven years now will lead mphasis.ai as its chief architect. 

Generative AI Roles Galore 

The number of jobs in generative AI has tripled in the last one year, not just in the senior leadership roles but also in the lower and mid levels. With skills from data science, linguistics, analysts, natural language processing and the others in policy which companies are promoting, there are new teams being created that need leadership and specialisation. As per Linkedin, there are close to 846 people with the job role product manager in generative AI.

Large number of companies are quickly adding generative AI features or building their own in creating their own. According to a Goldman Sachs report, a significant increase in the global increase in GDP is brought about by generative AI. Technological innovations are leading to the creation of new occupations, such as model trainers, generative AI architects, AI product managers, Generative AI prompt engineers and so on. 

So it isn’t surprising that every other company is adopting it without losing time. 

The post Why Are Companies Creating Specialised Generative AI Roles?  appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.