AI adoption brings measurable benefits and new challenges across industries

Businesses are adopting artificial intelligence across industries, but many are still struggling to prove that it delivers a measurable return on investment.

Perforce’s 2026 State of Real-Time Workflows Report found that game engines and real-time 3D engines are spreading beyond gaming into aerospace and defense, the public sector, education, and media and entertainment. Their established use in gaming offers decades of evidence of returns, while AI has yet to show sustained, measurable returns for many businesses.

Version control software is also becoming more important as projects handle more assets and content, including work by AI agents. Tracking who changed what is increasingly necessary.

The report found that 50% of employees using AI in their workflows feared replacement. Another 49% feared that AI tools would produce poor or inaccurate content, while 48% had ethical or compliance concerns.

Brent Schiestl, Perforce’s Senior Director of Product Management for Digital Creation, said customers are examining metrics such as release frequency, content per release, telemetry, and DORA benchmarks. He also warned that turning measurements into targets can encourage teams to game the metrics, while isolating AI’s contribution from other release activities remains difficult.