What’s synthetic intelligence?
Synthetic intelligence is software program that performs duties usually requiring human intelligence, corresponding to understanding language, recognizing photographs, making predictions, and producing content material.
Most fashionable AI depends on machine studying, by which methods enhance by processing information moderately than following hand-coded guidelines.
Full G2 explainer → | AI terminology A-Z →
A short historical past of AI
2024-2026 · AI at working scale
Over 75% of organizations use AI. Agentic AI strikes from pilot to manufacturing.
2022-2023 · Generative AI goes mainstream
ChatGPT launches and reaches 100M customers in 2 months, the quickest shopper tech adoption ever (2022). GPT-4, Claude, Bard, and Gemini comply with (2023).
1993-2020 · Brokers and deep studying
Deep Blue beats the chess world champion (1997). Apple launches Siri (2011). Google’s neural community learns to acknowledge cats from unlabeled photographs (2012). AlphaGo defeats Go’s world champion (2016). GPT-3 enters testing (2020).
1957-1987 · Maturation and increase
McCarthy creates LISP (1958). The primary industrial robotic debuts at GM (1961). ELIZA, the primary chatbot, launches (1966). Skilled methods hit business markets (1980); Japan invests $850M in AI (1981).
1950-1956 · Delivery of AI
Alan Turing publishes “Computing Equipment and Intelligence” (1950), proposing the Imitation Recreation. John McCarthy cash “synthetic intelligence” on the Dartmouth workshop (1956).
What are the several types of synthetic intelligence?
By functionality, it consists of Slim AI, AGI, and Superintelligence. Slim AI is the one kind that exists at this time, whereas AGI and Superintelligence stay theoretical. By operate, AI consists of Generative AI for content material creation, Agentic AI for autonomous job execution, Predictive AI for forecasting outcomes, and reasoning fashions for fixing complicated issues step-by-step.
By functionality
Slim AI (weak AI)
Slim AI powers all the things from spam filters to ChatGPT and Claude. “Slim” refers back to the scope of functionality, not sophistication; even superior LLMs function inside outlined domains moderately than possessing basic reasoning.
Synthetic basic intelligence (AGI)
A system that might change contexts and purpose throughout any area a human can. Researchers disagree on each definition and timeline, with severe predictions starting from a number of years away to by no means.
Synthetic superintelligence (ASI)
A system that exceeds human cognitive capacity throughout each area, together with science, creativity, and social intelligence. Most frequently mentioned in AI security and alignment contexts. No scientific consensus on whether or not it’s achievable.
By operate
Generative AI
Educated on huge datasets to supply new outputs throughout textual content, photographs, code, audio, and video. Energy instruments like GPT, Claude, and Midjourney.
Agentic AI
It goes past producing responses by taking actions corresponding to querying databases through instrument calls and API integrations.
Predictive AI
Constructed on statistical fashions and machine studying, Predictive AI identifies patterns in historic information to forecast outcomes.
Reasoning fashions
A more recent class of AI that causes step-by-step earlier than responding, designed for complicated coding, math, and evaluation duties.
What are the purposes of synthetic intelligence?
Synthetic intelligence is used throughout advertising and marketing, buyer assist, gross sales, engineering, and HR to automate duties and enhance effectivity. Frequent AI purposes embody content material creation, chatbots, assembly transcription, gross sales prospecting, code era, recruiting, and AI agent improvement.
Rankings proven are G2 reviewers’ common chance to advocate on a 0–10 scale.
Advertising and marketing
7 classes · 14K opinions
G2’s largest AI vertical by overview quantity. AI Content material Creation Platforms prime the vertical at 9.53/10, forward of AI Presentation Instruments at 9.47/10 and AI Avatar Turbines at 9.43/10. AI Writing Assistants lead by quantity with 7K opinions; AI Content material Creation Platforms additionally grew +110% YoY.
9.53/10
Common chance to advocate for AI Content material Creation Platforms, the highest-rated advertising and marketing AI class
G2 AI Assessment Knowledge
What are the most effective AI instruments and software program?
The perfect AI instruments and software program rely on the duty, however G2 customers mostly undertake AI writing assistants, AI chatbots, AI assembly assistants, AI gross sales assistants, AI video mills, AI coding instruments, AI recruiting software program, and AI agent builders to automate repetitive work, enhance productiveness, and scale enterprise operations.
How do you consider AI software program?
Evaluating AI software program comes down to 5 standards: output high quality, integration, time to ROI, information privateness, and vendor transparency. Patterns throughout 48K+ verified AI software program opinions on G2 between Could 2025 and April 2026 present output high quality and integration friction because the most-cited dissatisfaction drivers, whereas vendor transparency constantly separates the highest-rated instruments from the remainder.
How probably G2 reviewers are to advocate their AI software program (0–10):
78.8%
Would advocate their AI instrument to a peer
Rated 9 or 10 out of 10
3.0%
Would actively warn a peer off it
Rated 6 or beneath
9.21/10
Common chance to advocate
Throughout 45,250 distinctive reviewers
G2 analysis and stories on AI
G2 publishes data-driven stories on AI adoption, purchaser conduct, and market developments, backed by G2’s proprietary overview and survey information.
G2 flagship stories
Annual flagship
G2 State of Software program: AI progress and purchaser sentiment
Major supply for AI software program class progress and purchaser adoption developments.
2026 business outlook
G2’s Enterprise AI Brokers Report: 2026 outlook
Vendor survey on the maturity, autonomy, and outcomes of AI brokers.
Annual survey
Purchaser Conduct Report 2025: AI at all times included
1.1K+ B2B decision-makers; two-thirds issue AI into buy choices.
Attain 2025 keynote
AI mega developments: Reworking the way forward for go-to-market
How AI is reshaping go-to-market throughout gross sales and advertising and marketing.
G2 analysis by operate
AI resolution intelligence in advertising and marketing: G2’s 2026 business report Learn →
The state of AI gross sales intelligence in prospecting: G2’s 2026 report Learn →
AI in information integration: G2’s 2026 vendor insights Learn →
G2 management on AI
Views from G2’s management staff, grounded in platform information and first-party analysis.
Software program model visibility within the AI search period  · Godard Abel, CEO Learn →
G2 and Profound partnership for AEO and AI search  · Godard Abel, CEO Learn →
How AI brokers are delivering actual enterprise affect  · Tim Sanders, CIO Learn →
G2’s product improvements for the AI reply economic system  · Alexis Zheng, CPTO Learn →
Conversational opinions for an AI-first period  · Alex David, GM, AI Options Learn →
AI statistics
Figures from The Reply Economic system: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software program Shopping for, G2’s April 2026 analysis report, based mostly on a survey of 1,000+ B2B software program consumers and decision-makers throughout North America, EMEA, and APAC.
AI glossary
Brief definitions of the phrases you’ll encounter most frequently when evaluating AI software program.
FAQs about synthetic intelligence
Discover solutions to some generally requested questions on AI.
Fashionable AI learns patterns from information as an alternative of following hard-coded guidelines. A mannequin is skilled on a big dataset, then utilized to new inputs as soon as deployed. The capabilities most individuals use at this time (chatbots, code mills, voice assistants, picture instruments) are constructed on deep studying, which makes use of layered neural networks to seize patterns at scale.
Enterprise AI adoption clusters round 5 capabilities: content material era (writing, design, video), conversational interfaces (chatbots, helpdesks), workflow automation, information evaluation, and software program improvement help. Adoption is highest in roles with repetitive text-and-communication work, and rising quickest in operations, engineering, and HR.
Consumers analysis and shortlist software program by AI chatbots earlier than visiting a vendor’s web site. By the point a purchaser reaches a gross sales dialog, the seller has typically been evaluated and both included or excluded by an AI mannequin summarizing third-party sources. The shift is from search engine marketing to reply engine optimization (AEO): structuring content material so AI fashions can discover, cite, and advocate it precisely. G2’s Reply Economic system Report covers this intimately.
The principle sample is a niche between vendor promise and operational actuality. Consumers typically anticipate AI to work autonomously out of the field, then be taught that constant outcomes require cautious prompting, integration work, and human overview. Critiques are likely to favor distributors who place AI as a technique to speed up human work with structured oversight, moderately than as a hands-off substitute. How nicely expectations match actuality at buy time typically predicts long-term satisfaction.
Development on G2 exhibits up in two dimensions: overview quantity and purchaser site visitors. By year-over-year overview progress, the leaders are Conversational AI Survey Platforms (+1,126%), Reply Engine Optimization (+907%), Agentic AI (+382%), AI Voice Assistants (+150%), and AI Writing Assistants (+59%). By purchaser site visitors progress, AEO (+496%), Buyer Service Automation (+450%), and AI SDRs (+85%) lead. Machine Studying nonetheless attracts heavy purchaser site visitors regardless of slower overview progress, suggesting consumers consider ML platforms greater than they overview them.
Two patterns separate the strongest AI rollouts from weaker ones. AI-native merchandise constantly outscore legacy instruments which have AI options added on; reviewers describe the latter as stitched collectively and gradual to adapt. Merchandise that match cleanly into present workflows present sooner time-to-value than ones requiring groups to alter how they work. The strongest predictor of ROI is a slim, well-defined use case, not breadth of options.
The clearest technique to see the distinction is a workflow instance. Ask a generative AI to write down a follow-up electronic mail and it produces the e-mail. Give an agentic AI the objective “comply with up with this lead” and it pulls the prospect file, drafts the e-mail, schedules the follow-up, updates the CRM, and logs the end result, none of which required step-by-step prompting. The shift is from producing content material on demand to executing multi-step work towards a objective.
4 considerations dominate enterprise discussions: bias (notably in hiring, lending, and healthcare AI), information dealing with (whose information is used for coaching, the place it’s saved, who can entry it), explainability (whether or not choices will be audited), and accountability (who’s accountable when AI produces incorrect outputs). Regulation is catching up; the EU AI Act and rising US state legal guidelines are codifying these into purchase-time necessities. For software program consumers, due-diligence on coaching information, mannequin conduct, and incident response is more and more customary observe.
About this information. The figures cited on this web page come from G2’s proprietary information. Assessment-based statistics are drawn from 48K+ verified AI software program opinions submitted to G2 between Could 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026, spanning 85 AI software program classes and 2K+ distinct merchandise. Every overview is independently permitted earlier than publication.
Survey-based statistics come from G2’s revealed analysis, together with The Reply Economic system: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software program Shopping for, the Enterprise AI Brokers Report, and the 2025 Purchaser Conduct Report.
Aggregations, year-over-year progress charges, class breakdowns, and ranking distributions had been calculated utilizing G2’s Snowflake information warehouse with AI-assisted evaluation through Anthropic’s Claude.
