Understanding generative AI

Generative AI (GenAI) is a type of artificial intelligence that’s capable of generating original content, such as text, images, audio and video content. It creates content based on instructions and inputs that people provide, commonly called a prompt. Common examples include ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.¹

At ABB, the transformative power of AI, including analytical  and generative AI, is most known in our innovative products, services and offerings. But its impact doesn’t stop there. The rise of generative AI is also transforming how we work.

Why AI in the workplace matters to employees and organizations

Research shows that the increasing integration of AI in the workplace, specifically GenAI, presents both benefits and challenges for employees and organizations.

Employees who use AI for work daily report stronger gains in productivity, creativity, and work quality.² The vast majority of employees reported saving between one to seven hours per week on their tasks.³ Furthermore, AI can broaden the range of tasks workers can perform.⁴

For organizations, one white paper showed most organizations are actively reinventing themselves with AI, with many focusing on gains in operational efficiency, productivity and growth.⁵ In contrast, another report found the AI tools primarily enhance individual productivity, not overall company performance, with many organizations showing little structural changes.⁶

While most employees are more likely to have positive feelings towards AI for work, some employees are still worried or confused about the technology.² Many frontline employees have also not fully embraced the technology, with only half of them regularly using AI.⁷ Organizations have therefore the opportunity to provide leadership support, the right tools, and proper AI training.⁷

At ABB, we recognize the opportunity that we have to empower and encourage our employees to collaborate with AI, specifically GenAI, to increase their impact.

Increasing impact through productivity, exploration and self-development

Our aim is to equip, empower and engage our people by providing AI training and learning resources on:

• Generative AI and agentic AI fundamentals
• Safe and responsible AI use, ensuring our employees are trained to be accountable for prompting effectively, selecting the right inputs, and evaluating how to use AI-generated outputs
• Collaborating with AI to increase impact, including boosting productivity, enabling exploration and supporting self-development

Our people are powered by ABB’s generative AI tools

ABB employees have access to a range of generative AI tools. In addition to off-the-shelf offerings, we developed Abby—an in-house generative AI tool that helps our employees with daily tasks, content creation, data analysis and web research.

We are proud to share that Abby has recently won the European Product Design Award for Software Application and Mobile App⁸ and the London Design Award for Best Use of AI & Machine Learning.⁹

Our in-house tool is designed to provide meaningful benefits to our workforce. Integrated with our internal libraries and systems, it enables employees to search both company-specific and public information. It can also generate presentations using ABB templates.

Abby supports more than 15 large language models (LLMs), allowing employees to select the model that best fits their expertise and their needs.

Beyond that, users can create custom task agents to automate repetitive work, also known as AI agents.