As we see it today, the tech world is interconnected and evolving rapidly, fueling quick changes, innovation, and progress. Every industry is constantly reinventing itself to some extent to stay competitive in the present and future. What is striking is how all sectors are working toward tapping into the full potential of AI for new opportunities and efficiencies. In 2025, organizations will further harness AI to enhance product recommendations, predict market needs, create effective customer interactions, and provide proactive assistance.
The pivotal role of AI in building smart cities
In the coming year, AI one of the key advanced technologies in smart city transformation will influence urban development with more smart city projects utilizing AI to model and simulate developed cities. AI will also help urban planners by factoring in population growth and environmental impact to improve urban planning. Chinmay Hegde, Co-founder, CEO, and Managing Director of Astikos.ai, said, “Starting from 2025 till about a decade, more cities will invest significantly in AI-driven infrastructure to improve efficiencies and reduce operational cost. In the absence of AI-enabled systems, the maintenance of smart city infrastructure is not only expensive but complicated as well. Additionally, AI-driven solutions will help in conserving energy, minimizing environmental impact, water resources management and assist in adequate preparation for extreme weather conditions. As the population is growing in cities every day, AI will drive the growth of safer, sustainable and more efficient urban spaces in the days to come.”
AIOps – a must-have in modern cybersecurity strategy
The expanding digital landscape is constantly faced with growing cyber threats, stressing the importance of robust cybersecurity defenses. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are using AI as a weapon in their armory. AI-powered cyber-attacks leverage AI algorithms to identify vulnerabilities, launch an attack, exfiltrate data, and disrupt system operations. Cybersecurity leaders are struggling to protect their organizations from such attacks and more, especially with the cost of cybercrime skyrocketing, year-on-year. According to Statista’s Market Insights, the global cost of cybercrime is expected to reach USD 13.82 trillion by 2028 from USD 9.22 trillion in 2024. Commenting on the importance of AI in cybersecurity, Chetan Jain, Founding Executive Director, and Managing Director, of Inspira Enterprise, said, “Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is emerging as a powerful tool for security teams and can be integrated into cybersecurity models to improve the overall security posture of organizations. AIOps platforms enable cybersecurity leaders to automate real-time threat detection, improve incident response, reduce false positives, and enhance scalability as organizations expand their digital footprint.”
AI revolutionizing the Pro Audio Visual (Pro AV)
AI is transforming several industrial sectors from healthcare to education and from finance to manufacturing. It has brought about several developments in the Pro AV domain as well by enhancing learning and meeting experiences. Advanced algorithms after learning from huge volumes of data can generate realistic-synthetic voice, remove background noise, reduce audio feedback, and even identify speakers. Meeting experiences can be enhanced by framing, tracking, and focusing on people. Talking about AI-driven Pro AV experiences, Alok Anand, Regional Marketing Director APAC, Kramer Electronics, said, “In 2025, AI-driven solutions will have a transformation impact on AV broadcast enhancing seamless AV experiences creating intelligent audio adjustments and a more engaging environment for remote locations. AI-powered solutions will streamline operations and make collaboration easier for all. However, to become a leader in these advancements, AV professionals must remain adaptable and accept AI’s evolving capabilities.”
AI in cybersecurity, a double-edged sword
AI-driven solutions have transformed cybersecurity with tools and techniques that not only detect and respond to threats but also prevent them. While AI empowers cybersecurity teams it also helps threat actors to evade threats and launch malicious attacks and automate them. AI enables the generation of fake content and targets potential victims adding further to the complexity of threats. Autonomous weapons that are powered by AI can pose a threat to human lives raising ethical concerns. Responding to this, Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Chairman and Managing Director, of ProcessIT Global, said, “To address AI-powered threats, cybersecurity teams have to prepare themselves with AI-driven cybersecurity measures. Organizations must develop a set of policies and best practices for deploying AI systems. The integrity of training data should be established by leveraging very diverse datasets. Adversarial techniques should be used to train AI models to defend against potential attacks. A dynamic, adaptable, and holistic cyber defense strategy should be developed and implemented by organizations to stay ahead of AI-driven cyber threats.”
The need for high-quality, AI-ready data
For all AI-driven initiatives to succeed, AI-ready data of the highest quality is required. Real-world data gathered from diverse sources is unsuitable for training AI and ML models. It is not easy to trust the system’s entire output when the data used to train the model is flawed, biased, or incomplete. When organizations rely on data that is less granular, accurate, and clean to run AI models, it results in a high volume of false positives. Speaking about the importance of AI-ready data, Vinay Sharma, Regional Director India and SAARC, NETSCOUT, said, “High-fidelity, AI-ready data which is accurate, trustworthy, clean, and granular can enhance the ability of AIOps and cybersecurity platforms to deliver precise and actionable insights. To bring more transparency and structure to their AI roadmap, organizations should implement robust data governance and methods to clarify how AI-based systems make decisions. AI systems should be continuously monitored for performance anomalies and developers should take feedback on AI performance from users. It is important to ensure data insights are easy to understand and used by all stakeholders.”
As we look ahead to 2025, it is evident technologies are emerging and evolving while the trends are offering new potential for the future. Organizations can navigate the challenges of the increasingly complex interconnected work by embracing the trends and investing in relevant skillsets and emerging technologies to succeed and be future-ready.
