The world of work is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the accelerating capabilities of Generative AI. While robots taking over our jobs might be a sci-fi trope, AI’s ability to learn, create, and automate tasks is undeniably impacting various industries.

Generative AI is the umbrella term used to describe the type of AI that can create new content and ideas. This can include text, images, music, code and other types of content. We are now seeing how powerful this tool can be. But is this a threat or a powerful tool waiting to be harnessed?

Much like the way the calculator or the World Wide Web changed the way we do things, AI is starting to quietly revolutionise our lives. We are entering a new and exciting era of human machine co-creation and automation which is shaking up our ways of working. We set out to find out, what does the use of Generative AI look like in Gibraltar?

The Global Picture

The World Economic Forum’s report “The Future of Jobs 2023” found that over 85% of organisations included in a survey identified “increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broadening digital access as the trends most likely to drive transformation in their organisation” (World Economic Forum, 2023). Within technology adoption, more than 75% of companies are looking to adopt AI, big data and cloud computing. The report further finds that AI is “expected to result in significant labour-market disruption, with substantial proportions of companies forecasting job displacement in their organisations, offset by job growth elsewhere to result in a net positive” (World Economic Forum, 2023).

AI Adoption In Gibraltar

As Generative AI is largely considered to be a new technology, adoption around Gibraltar’s businesses is mixed. Businesses that are more tech-forward or comfortable with new technologies have embraced generative AI in their workflows and are already seeing the benefits in terms of productivity and ability to grow their services and client base. Equally, there is a high number of businesses in Gibraltar that operate completely offline, and therefore would not be equipped to integrate AI in any part of their business, potentially hindering their ability to remain competitive. In the middle sit the businesses that don’t currently use AI directly in their organisation but utilise third-party software or services which incorporate AI in their software.

Overall, the integration of AI in businesses around Gibraltar is mixed. While there are some cases where AI has made its way into day-to-day business operations, the technological adoption landscape in Gibraltar is complex and businesses will be working with the tools on different levels, or in some cases, not at all.

A New Age of Co-creation

Reports like Deloitte’s “Generative AI and the Future of Work” (2023) and the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs 2023” highlight a key trend: AI automating repetitive tasks will free up human employees for more strategic thinking, problemsolving, and innovation. Imagine AI handling administrative tasks, generating personalised marketing materials, or even translating documents and creating video content – all while employees focus on the big picture and drive creative solutions.

We are already seeing major companies adopting AI. Coca-Cola has hired two global executives solely for AI (WSJ, 2023), and while this is not yet a trend amongst businesses, AI as a tool is being heavily integrated into the workflows of companies, and not just big tech! Delta Airlines, Expedia, Bentley Design, Mayfair, and L’Oreal, are just some of the companies who have integrated AI either in their customer services, marketing or digital design spaces. Coca-Cola has produced an advert where famous artworks come to life with the help of DALL-E, Open AI’s generative image AI tool is inviting digital artists to create artwork with assets from the Coca-Cola archives (Coca-Cola, 2023). Meanwhile, Deloitte has released training for all of its employees to upskill them in understanding and using generative AI tools. In Gibraltar, marketing companies Kenshō and Purple Media discussed the benefits of using Generative AI tools to create early design mock-ups or blog content, which their staff can use to refine and improve. Both companies commented on the fact that using such tools in the early stage of the creative process allows their teams to remove some of the more basic tasks from their day and focus on higher-level tasks which puts emphasis on their professional expertise. This has allowed them to on-board a higher number of clients and produce more work for their existing clients by automating parts of the design, writing and other creative processes.

Increased Productivity

Around the world, companies such as H&M, Delta Airlines, Expedia and Heathrow Airport, to name a few, have all adopted Generative AI in their customer service processes and are reporting remarkable increases in response rates to the customer and reduction of call centre calls (Ada, 2023). Meanwhile, Indeed reported saving $10 million on content development (WSJ, 2023).

Gibraltar’s early adopters, Netgear, Kenshō, Purple Media and Legal Balance all reported integrating Generative AI in their operations and the benefits they have already seen. Netgear reported benefits in both effectiveness and time efficiencies in their staff training programme. Using the ability to create short and targeted AI-generated staff training videos and focus on peer-to-peer learning, they have reduced previously hour-long sessions to more targeted and focused training workshops for their staff. “It is much more engaging than having one person speak in front of a group of people. The discussions are much more interactive and there is a lot more peer learning” – Amit Chugani, Managing Director, Netgear. James Victor, Co-Founder and Director at Kenshō commented on the fact that Generative AI tools have made Kenshō “substantially more efficient – it allows us to fit in more activities during the day, gave us the ability to double the efficiency within the team and has increased our outputs, making us more competitive”.

Are Human Experts Here To Stay?

UNESCO’s “Skills for a Generative AI Future of Work” (2023) report emphasises the need for continuous learning and upskilling. While it is not necessary for everyone to become an AI expert, it is becoming ever more important to grow our digital literacy skills, ability to navigate vast amounts of information from a variety of sources and fostering skills such as critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and collaboration. We are seeing Generative AI’s ability to remove some of the basic tasks in workflow, however, Gibraltar’s business owners are all unanimous that the need for human experts will continue to be necessary. If used well, Generative AI can produce seemingly great content, but without the knowledge or expertise of the person using it, it can be hard to judge whether the quality of the content and information is accurate and reliable. To produce accurate and useful content, tools like ChatGPT rely on having a good prompt, and beyond this the person using them has to be able to apply their own expertise in the area to refine the content to ensure its accuracy and usefulness. Scott Simmons, Director of Legal Balance, described using ChatGPT as “working with a junior assistant”. “With tools like ChatGPT, you have to be very specific and precise about the information you want, and you have to keep teaching it. And similarly to having a junior colleague or an assistant provide you with a first draft, you would check it carefully and improve it”, Scott added.

The University of Gibraltar commented on the importance of ensuring that graduates are equipped with the knowledge and ability to navigate the use of AI tools in the workplace. “At the University of Gibraltar, we are proud of the fact that 96% of our graduates believe that the knowledge and skills they take away from their studies have supported their career aspirations and of our employability outcomes of 92% to 97% of our graduates being in employment or further study within 6 months of graduating. As such, our approach to dealing with generative AI (including ChatGPT) reflects the view that a growing number of employers want graduates who are digitally literate and this includes the ability to use generative AI tools. Thus, we aim to support our students to understand how to use these tools critically, ethically and intelligently and support our faculty to incorporate AI technology in learning and modify assessment accordingly.”

– Catherine Bachleda, Vice-Chancellor, University of Gibraltar.

Ethics, Transparency and Regulation

Organisations globally are calling for the responsible development and use of AI, ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability. The EU has developed regulation focussing on AI specifically –the EU AI Act (AIA), which is expected to be agreed in early 2024. This, combined with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018, is expected to help shape the growth and development of the generative AI market in the EU (Deloitte, 2024). In Gibraltar, the Government is planning to carry out a wide consultation regarding the regulation of AI (Gibraltar Chronicle, 2024), while the UK is working on establishing the Bletchley Park principles. As the adoption of AI is not widespread yet, business owners in Gibraltar felt that light regulation is appropriate for the time being. Concerns around the use of AI were mostly around the security of information and protecting organisational and client/customer privacy and data. Tools such as ChatGPT, and Microsoft’s new tool, Copilot, which may well be widely available to Microsoft Office users in the not-too-distant future, collect all the information that goes through them and use it to develop the tools further. Claus Olesen and Mark Rees of Knightsbridge commented on the importance of understanding how AI tools collect and process information, adding that protecting their client’s information is extremely important. Naturally, before businesses adopt such tools into their day-to-day work they would need to be assured of whether their data will continue to remain private and secure. Users and organisations concerned with matters of privacy, GDPR and confidentiality should ensure that they continue to familiarise themselves with the terms and conditions of service as they vary widely between Generative AI applications. This is considered as one of the main barriers to adoption at the moment.

So, Where Next?

As the world is moving forward in embracing AI tools, Gibraltar’s businesses are deciding on their levels of engagement with these new tools, creating a more diverse technological landscape. Early adopters, are already reporting the benefits they are seeing in using Generative AI tools – increased productivity, doubling outputs, growing their client bases and becoming more competitive in the market. As we navigate the challenges of AI adoption, however, it’s not just about embracing new technology—it’s about doing so responsibly. This presents a fantastic opportunity for those who want to adopt these new ways of working to lead the way in Gibraltar’s future of work.

Thank you to the following people for their contributions and thoughts on this topic:

Amit Chugani, Netgear; Professor Catherine Bachleda, University of Gibraltar; Scott Simmons, Legal Balance; James Victor, Kensho Marketing; Vincent Carrie, Purple Media; Claus Olesen and Mark Rees, Knightsbridge.

This article appeared in the Edition 2 of Thrive, a magazine by the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses. Read a digital version.