Has AI Changed the Way We Do Competitive Intelligence?
- Yigal Cohen
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
In recent years, AI tools have made big waves in the business world, including in Competitive Intelligence (CI). Everywhere we look, and with everybody we speak with, people are asking us whether AI actually changes our CI practice… or is it just hype?
The short answer: yes and no. Let’s break it down.
No. AI Can’t Replace Human-Centered CI.
Despite all the AI innovation, nothing replaces real conversations with real people, especially when you talk to executives who have direct knowledge of your competitor’s business.
Think about it:
Hearing from an ex-employee of a competitor can reveal insights no report ever will — things like internal struggles, real product limitations, or unannounced strategic shifts.
Talking to a customer of your competitor, or someone from their ecosystem, such as system integrators, tech partners, distributors, etc., gives you the under-the-radar context you just won’t find in public data.
These conversations give you interpretation, not just information. You get nuance, emotions, motivations, and other stuff AI simply can’t gather from bits of text or numbers.
That’s why human intelligence remains the gold standard in CI: AI can help gather data, but people are still far better at interpreting the real meaning behind it.
This aligns with most expert thinking, and even AI-focused CI professionals emphasize that AI should complement human insight, not replace it.
Yes. AI Has Changed How We Work Before and After Human CI.
Where AI really matters in CI is in everything before and after the human conversations:
Before the Interview
AI makes life easier when it comes to:
Collecting background info on competitors quickly by finding public data, reports, social mentions, patents, hiring trends... all things that would take hours of manual research.
Identifying people worth speaking with: finding executives with the relevant industry inside knowledge.
AI tools can scan massive datasets in minutes, spotting patterns and trends that would take human analysts days to uncover. This speeds up the whole CI process and helps you prepare smarter questions for real interviews.
After the Interview
That's the real help we see. Once you’ve done the human interviews, AI can help immensely with organizing and developing insights:
Not just drafting summaries of interviews, but spotting themes and conclusions across multiple conversations.
Validating signals against broader market data.
Making quick rough forecasts or framing preliminary interpretations.
This speeds up analysis but doesn’t replace the thinking; it augments it. Analysts still make the final judgment calls, while AI handles the heavy lifting of data processing and pattern spotting.
The Best CI Is Hybrid
The future of competitive intelligence isn’t about AI versus people; it’s about using both together.
AI excels at speed and scale. It helps gather data, spot patterns, and prepare faster than ever. But real competitive advantage doesn’t come from data alone; it comes from interpretation, context, and judgment.
That’s where people matter. Conversations with executives, ex-employees, customers, and partners reveal what’s really happening behind the numbers.
The winning formula is clear: AI plus human intelligence.
Additional CI Infographics:
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