According to Statistics Estonia’s survey on information technology, the use of artificial intelligence-based technologies increased significantly in 2024 compared with the previous year – five per cent of companies used AI technology in 2023, but by 2024 the figure had risen to 14 per cent.
Tiina Pärson, a senior analyst at Statistics Estonia, the country’s official statistics agency, pointed out that ChatGPT, which gained popularity last year, could also have an impact on the increased use of artificial intelligence.
“ChatGPT and other AI solutions have opened up new possibilities and changed the way people use technology,” Pärson said.
In terms of specific AI technologies, 7% of companies have used text mining and 6% have used natural language generation, a process that automatically generates human-understandable texts or stories from structured data. The use of image recognition, the process of identifying objects or people in photos or images, is also common (4%), as is deep learning to automatically analyse data in a specific area (4%).
Speech recognition (3%) and AI-based robotic process automation (3%) are also used. The latter is mainly used to automate business processes, for example in financial accounting, logistics and healthcare.
AI most common in the financial sector
Companies are using AI technologies mainly to improve sales and marketing, but also to manage administrative processes, research and development or innovation activities, and to ensure the security of information and communication technologies.
The use of AI technologies is most common in the finance and insurance sector, as well as in information and communication and professional, scientific and technical activities. In manufacturing, one tenth of enterprises use AI technologies.
Six per cent of companies have considered using AI technologies. Lack of expertise was identified as the main barrier.
One tenth of enterprises without ICT security measures
The survey also looked at cyber security incidents. Last year, more than one-fifth of Estonian businesses experienced at least one security incident that resulted in the unavailability of an ICT service, the loss or corruption of data, or the leakage of confidential data.
Of the companies participating in this year’s survey, 2.1 per cent had suffered a leak of confidential data in the previous year, either due to an intrusion, a phishing attack or the deliberate or accidental actions of their own employees. As many as 10 per cent of large enterprises said they had been affected by a leak of confidential data.
The unavailability of ICT services was also a widespread problem. This was reported by over a fifth of all companies and 48 per cent of large enterprises.
The most common ICT security measures are strong password authentication, off-site data backup and network access control. Almost one tenth of enterprises, mostly with a small number of employees, have no ICT security measures.
Statistics Estonia has been studying the use of ICT in enterprises since 2001. The 2024 survey covered 3,405 businesses. Companies with 10 or more employees are surveyed.
