Software's death by AI has been greatly exaggerated

Providers like Salesforce and Workday won't be easy to replace

- Dan Gallagher

Artificial intelligence can do a lot these days—and will be able to do a lot more in the future. But killing a $1.2 trillion industry will be a stretch.

That is how much the world's businesses are expected to spend on enterprise software this year, according to projections from market research firm Gartner. It is a big number, and nearly 11% higher than the $1.1 trillion that was spent last year.

Businesses spend more on software than just about any other technology-related category. But the age of AI has made that budget line look increasingly under threat. Among the early promises of tools such as ChatGPT was that it could allow novices to create software by simply telling the LLM what they want in natural language.

Such "vibe coding" could theoretically render premade software obsolete. In a live demo of its new GPT-5 model earlier this month, OpenAI employees created an app for teaching French to English speakers in a few minutes, all on stage.

"We think this idea of software on demand is going to be one of the defining characteristics of the GPT-5 era," OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said at the event. He is actually a bit late to the party; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang proclaimed in 2017 that "AI is going to eat software."