How do you use artificial intelligence as an energy professional? 

While many professionals utilize ChatGPT or Gemini for everyday tasks, such as decoding lengthy meeting minutes or staying on top of their inboxes, the true transformative power for the industry lies in applying these tools at scale across utility operations.

To that end, this article highlights how three large U.S. investor-owned utilities are driving measurable business impact through AI—strengthening customer engagement, accelerating system integration, and improving grid reliability.

1. Modernizing the call center customer experience 

Supporting the vision to advance one utility’s “all-virtual” vision for its call center, the leadership wanted to leverage their vast amount of call center data to improve operational performance, reduce call volume and proactively address billing issues and outages.

CGI worked with the client to implement a cloud-native pipeline to: 

• Automatically transcribe call recordings.

• Remove all customer personally identifiable information (PII). 

• Store clean text in an Azure Databricks lakehouse.

• Apply sentiment analysis and coaching analytics—all while encouraging policies that keep audio costs low and protect privacy.

This approach enabled AI-driven performance insights and predictive modeling while safeguarding customer data, lowering on-prem storage costs, and accelerating the shift to a modern, virtually staffed contact center.

2. Accelerating integration with AI-enabled middleware 

To address complexity and support real-time application development for its Customer Information System and legacy platforms, business and technology leaders from this utility partnered with CGI to build a custom middleware integration tool leveraging next-generation technologies, including a Retrieval-Augmented Generation-based architecture, Azure, and OpenAI. 

According to Clay Grisetti, Director of Consulting at CGI, the system functions “as an AI-powered requirements and search tool that identifies the correct APIs and payload details based on a developer’s request in natural language. 

Outcomes delivered include: 

• Reduced knowledge barriers between teams.

• Accelerated integration and development cycles.

• Improved consistency enabled by a centralized data repository. 

3. Unlocking smart meter intelligence value  

Utilities nationwide are making substantial investments in intelligent infrastructure, especially in building out their AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure).

But once deployed, how do utilities maximize that investment?

A large utility partnered with CGI to develop the AMI Intelligence Hub, a platform that consolidates and enriches data from AMI and complementary sources to detect abnormal consumption patterns, predict equipment failures and identify outages.

Using anomaly detection algorithms and time-series forecasting, the Hub provides:

• Dashboards with key operational metrics such as SAIDI, CAIDI, meter uptime, and current.

• Early indicators of grid health and equipment degradation.

• Actionable insights for operations, distribution planning, and asset management teams.

These capabilities enable predictive maintenance, enhance outage management, and help utilities extract long-term value from AMI investments.

From individual use cases to enterprise-scale AI transformation

AI is no longer a curiosity or productivity booster—it's a strategic enabler for modern utilities. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining application development and fortifying grid resilience, the potential benefits are substantial.

However, deploying AI responsibly and effectively requires careful planning, technical expertise, and a deep understanding of utility operations.

To explore how your organization can scale AI solutions and deliver measurable business value, connect with CGI for additional insights.

This article is the second in a four-part series exploring how utilities are embracing AI as a critical component of the future energy transition. Review our first blog here.

Stay tuned for upcoming installments.

AI is moving fast, but real impact doesn’t come from one cool tool or a single pilot project. It comes from connection. 💡

In our new white paper, Navigating an AI Ecosystem: Scaling for Impact, we explore how organizations can go beyond experimentation and start building connected, responsible AI ecosystems that actually scale. From data to governance to people, it’s all about bringing the pieces together to drive lasting results.

Ready to see what that looks like in action?

Download your free copy today

Artificial intelligence is transforming every industry - but technology alone doesn’t drive change, people do. People & AI: An Executive’s Guide to Uniting Talent and Technology explores how leaders can unlock the full value of AI by pairing innovation with human-centered transformation.

From automation to augmentation, the guide reveals how forward-thinking organizations are empowering teams, redesigning roles, and reshaping culture to achieve measurable outcomes. Through real-world examples, leadership insights, and CGI’s own AI transformation journey, this paper shows how to turn AI ambition into enterprise-wide impact, helping executives reimagine what their people and organizations are truly capable of.

Download the Guide now

Consider this: CGI’s Voice of Our Clients results indicate that 36% of the organizations have implemented or are implementing traditional AI this year. National Grid is investing $100M in AI startups advancing the future of energy. The global market for AI in energy is projected to reach $76 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 17% from today.

What does all this mean? From where I stand, it’s clear. There is boundless potential for AI to transform utilities. This technology has the power and potential to redefine operations, accelerate top priorities like grid modernization and decarbonization, and answer some of the most fundamental questions utility leaders face, from customer service to forecasting. 

Over the course of this series, we will explain how AI is becoming an indispensable engine for both innovation and value at utilities. And today? We are starting with the basics. Let’s dive in to see how AI can accelerate positive change for utility leaders—and how those leaders can make the most of this technology changing tides.

AI is doubling down on digital transformation. 

Utilities are no strangers to cutting-edge technology: They can turn food waste into electricity, have increase demand response event frequency 173% from 2021 to 2024, and are debuting new smart grid technology on a near-daily basis.

But AI is upping the ante as an ecosystem of technologies—not just single or one-off innovations, but an integrated network of capabilities, enablers, and policies. At CGI, we define the AI ecosystem around six core elements: 

1. Data

2. Workforce readiness

3. Infrastructure

4. Governance

5. Strategic alignment

6. Security

Each element matters on its own, but true impact comes from the connective tissue that binds the ecosystem, turning potential into sustainable outcomes.

When energy leaders integrate AI as a network of overlapping technologies and innovate across these areas with a holistic approach, they can scale technology upgrades faster and more efficiently than our discrete grid technology from the pre-AI era ever could.

AI requires a thoughtful framework for quick-scaling innovation. 

Making AI work for you is about getting the basics right. AI is transformational. It’s easy to get caught up in all the “cool” things that this technology can do without focusing on a few key areas that must be priorities. An executive sponsor will ensure alignment of AI initiatives with the business strategy. 

The first is cleaning up your data. This needs to be an explicit part of any AI roadmap with its own budgets, talent, and management if you want to move toward commercializing AI use cases (and avoid regulatory breaches, flawed decision-making, loss of stakeholder confidence, and more). 

The second is knowing whom to call. A strong enterprise-wide data management program is essential to ensuring data quality, availability, governance, and security. Organizations that expect major innovation or technology advancements without this foundation often find that even the most promising AI applications fall short. 

And the third is knowing your why. It’s about more than just wanting intelligent digital infrastructure. Utility business and IT leaders need to have a clear vision for why they are embarking on any AI initiative, which is inherently complex and cross-functional. And they need to communicate the why clearly and consistently to gain financial and organizational support.

Taken together, these three foundational elements set the basis for smarter, more efficient, and more scalable technology adoption across your organization.

AI is driving business value, plain and simple. 

Making AI a game-changer requires focusing on business value. →

It’s imperative to focus on implementing AI for tangible return-on-investment (ROI), not just for the sake of AI itself. Achieving ROI is all about understanding your current benchmarks, setting attainable metrics, and tying these metrics directly to business value.

The critical questions to ask to ensure that AI is a driver of ROI:

• Are the necessary data and talent available to support the project?

• Is the desired outcome aligned with broader business goals? 

• Are you driving meaningful process improvements that leverage AI's true capabilities or simply automating tasks that do not require it?

So, when we put all this together…what’s possible?

One of the use cases we have developed at CGI involves integrating an AI-powered natural language chatbot into our CGI OpenGrid360 solution. 

• This chatbot allows utility personnel to interact with backend operational data across a broad range of utility functions, systems, and datasets simply by asking questions in plain English. 

• This intuitive, intelligent interface is just one example of how AI can embed directly into utility workflows, turning complex data into actionable intelligence and driving the energy transition forward with confidence. 

To learn more about how AI can be a launchpad in your organization, check out CGI’s solutions for utilities.

But keep in mind: The idea of moving fast is interwoven throughout all conversations about the nexus of AI and energy. The pace of innovation is accelerating, which demands faster, more informed decisions regarding strategy, funding, procurement, supply chains, risk, and more.

So -- that’s what we are covering throughout the rest of this series, we will cover not just how AI is changing energy, but also how leaders are making it happen on their terms and timelines. We will explore critical utility use cases in more depth, including drone and image AI for wind turbine asset inspection, AI-powered call center transcription and insights, meter hub intelligence, and more.

Keep reading: This is the first in a series of four articles exploring how the utility industry is embracing AI as a key piece of the future energy puzzle. Watch for more to come in this series here and learn more about CGI here.

AI is everywhere. Gartner predicts that global AI utility industry spending will reach $17.8 billion in 2027. In many cases AI is not just progress, but a game changer, a big leap forward. In other cases, not so much. Big AI spending and the newest technologies do not always equate with new business value. Navigating data quality, business processes, competing priorities, and more are all part of building a bridge to purpose-driven AI that will create business value across the utility enterprise.

In this exclusive Energy Central PowerSession with utility AI strategy leaders and practitioners, we will dive into what purpose-driven AI looks like, what it doesn’t look like, “the basics” for a successful AI approach, and how best-of-breed technologies and practices can be part of the solution. Watch now for insights on how AI can elevate and accelerate critical customer and grid operations!

Panelists

- Nick Whatley, Director, Enterprise Data and Customer Analytics, Southern Company
- David Radford, Sr. Solutions Architect, Databricks
- Gaby Lio, AI Director, Emerging Technology Practice, CGI
- Mike Smith, Principal, KLN Group (Moderator)

Watch today!