Generative AI, which caused a huge stir in 2023, is attracting attention as a new way to improve productivity in developed countries where the working population is declining, and its adoption is spreading, mainly among companies. On the other hand, consumers have only experienced the experience of asking generative AI questions and receiving answers, and AI has not yet led to an expansion of the consumer market.
Gartner has included Machine Customers in its top 10 strategic technologies for 2024, suggesting that AI may contribute to the expansion of the consumer market in the future. Developed countries are facing a decline in the working population, and Japan in particular has seen its GDP remain flat for the past 30 years, and according to the latest data from the IMF, Japan will fall to 34th place in terms of GDP per capita by 2023.
In Japan, where GDP is expected to continue to decline due to the declining birthrate, the contribution of Machine Customers to GDP has the potential to become a permanent growth factor, rather than a temporary stimulus. There are two types of Machine Customers: those in which AI replaces existing markets, and those in which completely new demand is created, and the latter is expected to lead to an expansion of GDP.
In B2B, IoT-enabled industrial equipment autonomously procures from suppliers, while in B2C, smartphone-owning consumers have their own dedicated AI agents that autonomously make purchases and contracts on their behalf. From a company's perspective, the latter is a double-edged sword, as it has both positive aspects in the form of new demand and negative aspects in terms of revenue (price negotiations, contract cancellations, switching, etc.).
Companies will also begin to counter this situation by using AI agents, and the M2M (machine-to-machine) market is expected to expand in the future.
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