Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is surging amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasingly pervasive technology takes many forms, and those various applications of AI are driving increased investment in a bid to minimize the impact of the coronavirus and seek out knowledge that could lead to better testing and a vaccine.

Spending on AI is poised to jump, particularly among enterprises that are deploying the technology in the cloud to accelerate efforts around automation and agility, according to a new report from IDC.

“AI is a technology that can play a significant role in helping businesses and societies deal with and solve large scale disruption caused by quarantines and lockdowns,” said Andrea Minonne, senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement. 

“Of all industries, the public sector will experience an acceleration of AI investments,” Minonne said. “Hospitals are looking at AI to speed up COVID-19 diagnosis and testing and to provide automated remote consultations to patients in self-isolation through chatbots. At the same time, governments will use AI to assess social distancing compliance"

Confidence in automation and AI as a means to minimize the impact of the pandemic is growing, according to 16% of 181 European companies surveyed by IDC in late March. The firm also noted that the application of AI to automate processes is a crucial response to the crisis, but it could also lead to increased adoption for other long-term goals. 

“As a short-term response to the COVID-19 crisis, AI can play a crucial part in automating processes and limiting human involvement to a necessary minimum,” said Petr Vojtsek, research analyst at IDC, in a statement. “In the longer term, we might observe an increase in AI adoption for companies that otherwise wouldn’t consider it, both for competitive and practical reasons.”

The spread of COVID-19 and the resulting global public health guidelines for people to stay home has also given rise to digital assistants that rely heavily on AI, according to Oracle. For professionals now working from home for the first time, access to rapidly changing information, human resources activities, public health directives, and IT workarounds have become increasingly important these past few weeks, the company said.

“While we have the freedom to engage in user-friendly experiences in our personal lives — such as Alexa and Siri — there have been few options for people in their professional lives. But that’s changing,” Suhas Uliyar, VP of AI and digital assistant at Oracle, wrote in a blog post.

Within the next year, Oracle predicts human resources functions will begin shifting from traditional web-based platforms to a digital assistant user interface. Gaining immediate access to important information via digital assistants removes the need for employees to download apps or acquire training, Uliyar explained.

Social distancing guidelines have impacted recruitment, onboarding, training, and remote access to IT systems, according to Oracle. “A digital assistant is one common interaction point for employees, contractors, or partners across multiple applications and can provide a quick, consistent, and concise response,” Uliyar wrote.

Multiple AI vendors are also elevating investment in AI in response to the pandemic. Nvidia earlier this week joined the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which is led by the White House and IBM, to provide supercomputers and compute performance to researchers. The task force of computer scientists at Nvidia are also lending expertise in AI and contributing software for life science applications. 

IBM also this week touted AI for its potential to solve and prevent challenges in the supply chain. “Using AI, organizations can turn unstructured real-time data into insights that help predict disruptions and vulnerabilities, providing near-term visibility,” Jonathan Wright, cognitive process re-engineering team lead at IBM, explained in a blog post. 

Prior to the pandemic, IDC forecast European AI spending to reach $10 billion this year, representing a 33% compound annual growth rate through 2023. It now expects a variety of changes in spending to occur in 2020.