Almost 23% of companies employing more than 10 people used one or more AI-based technologies last year, figures from the statistics agency CBS AI monitor have shown.

That is nine percentage points up from the previous three years, when AI use was relatively stable, the CBS said.

The technologies most often used by companies were text mining  (analysing texts) at 13.5% and natural language generation (generating written or spoken texts) at 12.3%.

Compared with last year, companies more than doubled their use of text mining while natural language generation use tripled. Language recognition use increased from 3.7% to 6.5% in 2024.

Big companies use AI more often than smaller companies, with companies employing over 500 staff leading the way. Companies with 10 to 19 staff scored among the lowest AI users.

Information and communication companies were among the biggest users of AI at 58%, compared to 37% a year earlier. Runners up are business and financial services with 39.8% and 37.4% respectively, making an average jump of some 10%.

The Netherlands comes 6th in the  European ranking of countries in which companies employing over 10 people use at least one of seven AI-based technologies, Eurostat figures show.

A majority of companies that considered using AI but decided not to cited a lack of experience. Over half said they were worried about privacy.