London, March 15 (IANS): Sixty-eight per cent of organisations use artificial intelligence (AI) for IT functions, but 70 per cent believe AIs greatest impact by 2020 will be in marketing, customer service, finance and HR, a new study said on Wednesday.

According to global IT consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), organisations with the greatest financial improvements from AI investments expect three times as many new AI-related roles by 2020 as compared to companies with smallest improvements.

"Given the increasing digital disruption across every industry and the public sector, AI should become a key and integrated component of an organisation's strategy," said K Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer of TCS, in a statement.

Eighty-four per cent of companies see the use of AI as "essential" to competitiveness, with a further 50 per cent seeing the technology as "transformative".

Financial investments in AI are set to rise, as seven per cent of companies each earmarked at least $250 million toward AI in 2016 and two per cent already plan to invest more than $1 billion by 2020, likely looking to gain a competitive advantage as early adopters, the findings showed.

Almost seven out of 10 companies currently use AI to detect and prevent potential hacks and security threats to their systems.

The study titled "Getting Smarter by the Day: How AI is Elevating the Performance of Global Companies," polled 835 executives across 13 global industry sectors in four regions of the world -- North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.