Businesses need more than generic chatbots to benefit from AI. Will this budget help?

This month’s federal budget made a familiar promise: artificial intelligence (AI) will help lift Australia’s productivity.

But for many Australian firms, especially small and medium-sized businesses, “using AI” still means experimenting with a generic chatbot to draft emails, summarise documents or write marketing copy. That might save time and lower costs. But it’s unlikely to transform national productivity on its own.

For Australia, the more exciting opportunity sits beyond such generic tools. It is a story of research partnerships, commercialisation pathways, and the developers, researchers and startups that turn AI into specialised solutions.

Measures announced in the budget could make things easier for the AI ecosystem trying to move this vision forward. But there are also concerns about how tax reforms could impact incentives for AI startups, and the abrupt pausing of an existing grant program.

Moving beyond chatbots