A machine customer takes the place of a human customer, acquiring goods or services in exchange for payment. And, according to Gartner, they’re set to be involved with a wide range of both business- and consumer-related purchases.

“The machine customer era has already begun,” stated Don Scheibenreif, one of the authors of When Machines Become Customers, Gartner’s latest book.

“There are more machines with the potential to act as buyers than humans on the planet. Today, there are more than 9.7 billion installed IoT devices, including equipment monitoring, surveillance cameras, connected cars, smart lighting, tablets, smartwatches, smart speaker [sic] and connected printers.

“Each of these has a steadily improving ability to analyze information and make decisions. Every IoT enabled product could become a customer. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027 50% of people in advanced economies will have AI personal assistants working for them every day.”

Gartner argues that, while we’re in the first phase of the machine customers’ evolution, executives across enterprise must begin collaborating to prepare for the onset of machine customers. This includes CIOs to marketing officers, supply chain officers to revenue officers.

HP Instant Ink, Amazon Dash Replenishment, and Tesla’s cars can be exemplified as services at the first phase of machine customers’ evolution, Gartner has said, as they automatically perform limited functions for owners. As a “bound customer,” they execute a strict set of actions, and are confined by the rules set by the owner.

“In the second emerging phase, people still set the rules for machines as ‘adaptable customers’, although AI technology can choose and act on behalf of a human with minimal intervention for select tasks,” explained Mark Raskino, the book’s other author.

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The third and final phase is said to be where machine customers become “autonomous customers,” and can harness enough intelligence to act independently of humans, and in a discreet way where it takes ownership of the transaction process.

“What the machine customers from each phase have in common is that they will make decisions differently from humans in three ways,” said Scheibenreif.

“They are logical and will make decisions based on rules that may or may not be transparent. Second, they can also process large amounts of information. Lastly, machines focus on completing tasks efficiently and without emotion, and they can’t be influenced by being ‘wine [sic] and dined.’”

According to a timeline provided by Gartner, the third phase of machine customers’ evolution is suggested to be around 2036.