Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Gen AI ' s automation boost
Generative AI | Productivity
April 2, 2025 – Generative AI increases the automation potential of tasks that had previously been difficult to automate. Decision-making and collaborative tasks such as applying expertise and managing and developing people have the greatest potential automation boost from incorporating gen AI, note Senior Partner Vincent Bérubé and coauthors. Data management tasks, which already have fairly high automation potential, could experience an additional boost from gen AI.
To read the article, see, “The critical role of strategic workforce planning in the age of AI,” February 26, 2025.
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Visual form
Paired horizontal bar chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart is a single comparison chart arranged by task groups from top to bottom, with two bars for each task. Read each row horizontally to compare the automation potential without gen AI against the higher with-gen-AI bar, then move down the page through the different task families.
What is being compared
It compares automation potential across task categories, and within each task it compares the before-and-after effect of adding gen AI. The task groups span decision-making and collaboration work, data-management work, and physical work.
Measurement system
The chart is measured in percent technical automation potential under a midpoint scenario. Color distinguishes the two states, with one bar for without gen AI and the other for with gen AI.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The graphic is organized as a set of horizontal bar pairs, one pair per task, grouped under broader headings such as decision-making and collaboration, data management, and physical work. The paired structure makes the uplift visible row by row because the with-gen-AI bars extend farther to the right where the technology adds meaningful automation headroom.
Main takeaway from the visual
The visible takeaway is that gen AI adds the largest automation lift to knowledge and interaction-heavy tasks that previously had lower potential for automation. The biggest rightward jumps occur in applying expertise, managing and developing people, and interacting with stakeholders, while physical tasks change much less.
Key standout values or extremes
Predictable physical work stays near the upper end already, around 70 percent, so its paired bars show much less incremental movement than the knowledge-work rows. By contrast, several decision and collaboration tasks move from much lower starting levels to visibly higher with-gen-AI ranges, making those rows the clearest step-change in the chart.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.