AI investment is accelerating
The advantage will come from knowing where to point it
Gartner’s latest CIO research reveals a widening gap between corporate enthusiasm for AI and the ability to make it pay.
For business and marketing leaders, the message is simple: having AI will not set you apart. Everyone will have it. The advantage will come from making better decisions about where to use it.
AI has moved to the front of the queue
CIOs expect IT budgets to rise by an average of just 3.7% in 2027. Yet funding for agentic AI is forecast to grow by 31.8%, generative AI by 31.4%, AI-native development platforms by 23.1%, and business intelligence and data analytics by 20.9%.
AI spending is growing even inside organisations whose overall IT budgets are shrinking. Companies are cutting elsewhere to keep funding it.
But AI now has to do more than sound impressive in a board presentation. It has to prove its value.
More AI does not necessarily mean more value
While 58% of CIOs face growing pressure to deliver cost improvements from AI, 51% expect it to increase the total cost of owning and operating technology. Only 13% say AI has produced significant value so far.
There is the uncomfortable truth.
AI can produce more content, more analysis, more personalisation and more software. Unfortunately, “more” is not a business strategy. A faster car pointed in the wrong direction merely gets you lost sooner.
The danger is becoming brilliantly efficient at doing things nobody particularly needed in the first place.
Gartner recommends clear ownership, early kill criteria and a 90-day proof point for every AI initiative. Sensible advice. Decide what business decision the technology should improve, what success looks like and how quickly you expect to see evidence.
If nobody can explain that clearly, you may not have an AI strategy. You may simply have an expensive new hobby.
Capability is decentralising faster than accountability
Today, only 15.3% of technology solutions are developed entirely outside central IT. But 80% of technology executives expect AI to increase that number by 2030. Meanwhile, 73% of enterprises have no plans to introduce rules governing who owns the technology, its costs or its consequences.
For marketing teams, this creates enormous freedom. They can build agents, automate processes and generate campaigns without waiting for a traditional technology programme.
It also creates risk. Giving every department its own collection of AI agents without common rules is rather like issuing everyone a company credit card and wishing Finance the very best of luck.
The marketing problem is moving upstream
As AI becomes widely available, the question changes.
It is no longer: “Can we make this?”
It is: “What should we make, for whom, and why?”
Production is becoming abundant. Judgement remains scarce.
Customers are not sitting at home wishing brands would produce more content. They want something relevant, useful or interesting. Before launching another content agent, organisations need to understand where demand is moving, which competitors are gaining influence, what audiences genuinely care about and where investment might change behaviour.
When everyone can create at speed, knowing what deserves to be created becomes the advantage.
From artificial intelligence to decision intelligence
The next phase of AI in marketing will be defined less by novelty and more by decision intelligence: turning a vast and changing collection of market signals into confident choices.
That belief sits behind Cylvy by Silver.
Its Market Intelligence and Audience Intelligence capabilities help leaders see what is changing across competitors, content, search, influence, AI visibility and customer groups. They can then decide where human creativity and machine capability will have the greatest effect.
The point is not to add another shiny AI tool to an already crowded stack. It is to make the rest of the stack more useful.
This is also why the human-in-the-loop matters. Evidence does not replace experience, imagination or judgement. It gives them a better place to begin.
Data can reveal a gap. People must decide whether it matters. AI can identify a pattern. People must decide what to do about it. Machines can generate an almost limitless number of ideas. Humans still have to recognise the good one.
AI is changing work not simply removing it
Gartner’s research also challenges the idea that AI automatically means fewer people. Some 37% of CIOs expect technology headcount to remain stable and 40% expect it to grow, particularly in data, analytics and cybersecurity.
The better question is not how many people AI can replace. It is how much better people can become when equipped with stronger intelligence.
Organisations will still need strategists who can frame the right problem, creatives who can make an idea distinctive, technologists who can connect systems responsibly and leaders who know the difference between activity and value.
The competitive advantage is direction
The winners will not necessarily be the organisations with the most agents, the biggest model or the greatest volume of AI-generated output.
They will be the ones that know where to focus, what to stop and which decisions genuinely matter.
In 2027, having AI will be ordinary. Knowing your market better, understanding your audience more deeply and pointing AI at the opportunities that matter will be anything but.
About Silver
Human experience. Creative imagination. Cylvy-powered intelligence.
Silver helps ambitious organisations turn complexity into clarity, ideas into belief, and belief into growth.
Source: Gartner, 2027 CIO Agenda Preview: Closing the Gap Between AI Ambitions and IT Realities, 2026. Survey findings are attributed throughout. Gartner does not endorse Silver or Cylvy.
