Only 1 in 5 AI projects creates positive ROI. That was the case last year and remains so this year, according to Gartner at the IT Symposium in Barcelona, which is entirely focused on artificial intelligence.
Although 58 per cent of executives report realising value from AI, organisations are spending 18 times more to achieve these gains than they did two years earlier, around 2024; a relatively small number of successful projects drive much of the reported return.
Only 21 per cent of organisations have mastered supervised AI, whilst 71 per cent plan to deploy it within the next 12 months, creating a potential governance gap, according to Gartner.
AI and software development
In 2026, AI-powered developer tools were reported to have increased average developer productivity by 20% to 25%, with advanced developers achieving gains of at least 40% to 50%. AI-generated code reportedly accounted for more than half of the code released.
These changes require a shift from manual code production towards architectural thinking, code quality review, agile workflows and outcomes-oriented delivery.
Move beyond AI volume
AI use cases increased by more than 300 per cent in a year, but organisations often treat each use case as an isolated project rather than building on successful outcomes.
Organisations should avoid using AI by default. The ESSA framework—Eliminate, Simplify, Standardise, Automate—helps determine whether a task requires AI, basic automation, or no technological intervention. Kerry Group adopted this approach and deployed AI agents where autonomous decision-making was required.
Reported productivity gains vary: one set of figures from a lecture puts actual AI productivity gains at around 16 per cent, well below vendors’ claims of 50 per cent or more.
A study found that 40 per cent of workers received low-quality AI-generated work, or ‘AI slop’, in a single month. Cleaning it up took an average of two hours, with an estimated annual cost of $52 million for an average S&P 500 company.
Automating an old process without redesigning it is like “putting a jet engine on a horse. Only 31 per cent of executives reportedly redesign workflows when adopting AI, according to a study by Gartner.
