Product or feature? A key AI debate could leave CIO strategies in limbo

The rapidly evolving AI ecosystem, where new products and services seem to appear daily, presents CIOs and IT purchasing leaders with increasingly challenging decisions, in part because of uncertainty about where the AI market may ultimately be headed.

One major debate, with implications for CIOs and IT buyers, is whether AI will primarily be a product or a feature after the AI market sorts itself out.

On the one side are AI pure-plays offering niche and often task- or industry-specific point solutions, as well as AI generalists such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google, whose standalone large language models (LLMs) can be integrated with other IT systems. On the other side, IT vendors such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and many cybersecurity providers are rapidly adding AI features to enhance and transform their core products.