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Trends7 min read

Where Generative AI Actually Creates Business Value

Cut through the hype. Here's where generative AI delivers real ROI—and where it doesn't.

January 7, 2026·Edge Team

Beyond the demos

Everyone's seen the impressive demos: ChatGPT writing poetry, DALL-E creating art, AI coding assistants completing functions. But what actually moves the needle for business?

Where generative AI excels

Content creation at scale. Product descriptions, marketing copy, email variations, social media posts. Not perfect, but good enough to dramatically reduce time-to-publish.

Code acceleration. Not replacing developers, but making them 30-50% faster. Boilerplate, documentation, tests, refactoring.

Customer service first draft. Draft responses for agents to review. Handle simple queries end-to-end. Summarize customer history.

Document synthesis. Summarizing research, extracting key points from lengthy documents, preparing briefings.

Internal knowledge access. Making institutional knowledge searchable and accessible through natural language.

Where generative AI struggles

Anything requiring accuracy. Generative AI can be confidently wrong. High-stakes decisions need human verification.

Novel analysis. It can synthesize what exists. It can't generate genuinely new insights from your data.

Regulated communications. Legal, medical, financial advice all require human oversight.

The ROI calculation

The clearest ROI comes from:

  • Reducing time on repetitive content tasks
  • Accelerating development cycles
  • Improving customer service efficiency
  • Making information more accessible

Start there. Prove value. Expand.

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