BUSINESS TECH | AI survey: Philippine firms bullish despite security concerns
Across the region, about 75% of organizations said AI has become essential to business operations, while roughly 90% have begun adopting AI development platforms and AI models.
A growing number of businesses across Asia, including those in the Philippines, are increasing investments in artificial intelligence (AI), although concerns over data privacy, cybersecurity and implementation costs continue to slow wider adoption, according to a new regional survey commissioned by Alibaba Cloud.
The “AI Business Application Readiness and Accessibility Survey,” conducted by independent research firm NielsenIQ (NIQ), found that 90% of Asian organizations are optimistic about adopting AI, while 95% plan to increase spending on AI products across infrastructure, platforms and model services. The survey covered 1,000 IT decision-makers across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
Among Philippine respondents, 91% expressed a positive outlook toward AI adoption, with 57% saying they are actively exploring or implementing AI initiatives. The study also found that 74% of local enterprises have migrated all or most of their IT infrastructure to the cloud.
Philippine businesses identified innovation and new business opportunities as the leading reason for adopting AI, cited by 68% of respondents. Other priorities included improving operational efficiency (54%), enhancing customer experience (51%), gaining competitive advantage (50%) and increasing revenue (39%).
Across the region, about 75% of organizations said AI has become essential to business operations, while roughly 90% have begun adopting AI development platforms and AI models. Only 1% of respondents said AI is not a business priority. Common enterprise applications include data analysis and decision-making, customer service, marketing, software development and human resources.
Despite strong interest, respondents cited data privacy and security as the biggest obstacle to expanding AI adoption. Across the region, 48% identified privacy and security concerns as a major challenge, followed by implementation costs (42%) and shortages of AI talent and expertise (37%). Philippine respondents similarly ranked privacy and security as their top concern, followed by high implementation costs.
The survey also found that 45% of respondents prefer AI solutions integrated with cloud infrastructure over standalone AI models, citing simplified deployment, centralized security and easier management. Organizations also said they want more industry-specific AI solutions, improved access to skilled workers and more affordable offerings to accelerate adoption.
Grant Gong, head of solutions architect at Alibaba Cloud Philippines, said AI adoption in the country is being driven by both large enterprises pursuing digital transformation and small and medium-sized businesses seeking greater operational efficiency.
“The pace of AI adoption in the Philippines is driven by two factors: large enterprises are pursuing AI initiatives as part of their top-level strategic digital transformation, while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are adopting software to meet their operational needs for cost reduction and efficiency improvement,” Gong said.
Full disclosure: All news articles published on the TechSabado website are written by human journalists, unless otherwise specified. Final text editing is also performed by human editors, with artificial intelligence (AI) used only to assist with additional grammar and style guide corrections..
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