CMOs Expect AI to Dramatically Change Their Role by 2027

Sixty-five percent of chief marketing officers believe advances in artificial intelligence will dramatically transform their role within the next two years, according to new research by Gartner.

Additional research found that 82 percent of business leaders say their companies’ identities will need to significantly change to keep pace with the impact of AI on markets.

“The CMO role is undergoing a once-in-a-generation transformation. CMOs must prioritize becoming future-forward marketing leaders,” says Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, vice president of research in the Gartner Marketing Practice. “AI, market disruption, and cross-functional demands are expanding the CMOs’ remit, but not their resources. To stay relevant, CMOs must stop prioritizing execution and instead lead through strategic insight.”

“CMOs face heightened responsibility for end-to-end customer experience and commercial outcomes, often without additional resources,” addsEwan McIntyre, vice president analyst and chief of research for the Gartner Marketing Practice. “This demands a renewed focus on building hybrid human-AI teams and cultivating future-ready leadership capabilities. Leaders should emphasize human reasoning, adaptability, and the ability to architect meaningful customer experiences, ensuring their teams are equipped to meet expanded executive expectations and drive business growth in an AI-driven landscape.

“Success in this new era requires CMOs to set clear strategic direction, adapt to AI-driven customer journeys, and focus on creating authentic, differentiated value. The CMO role is evolving from influencer to designer of business impact,” McIntyre continues.

And while AI is revolutionizing personalization, content creation, and data-driven insights, many organizations struggle to realize its full potential, another Gartner survey found. In it, just 5 percent of marketing leaders who are not piloting AI agents report significant gains on business outcomes. Furthermore, for those further along the AI journey, agent capabilities aren’t yet delivering the promised business performance.

“To address this, CMOs must move beyond basic AI adoption and instead reengineer strategies, processes, and talent models, building AI-powered organizations that seamlessly integrate human creativity with machine intelligence,” McIntyre says. “Marketing teams should proactively reimagine their brand positioning and experiences to stay relevant as leaders anticipate significant evolution in company identity.”

Gartner also reported that genAI is disrupting channels, while agentic buying promises to reshape purchase decision making in ways that reduce human attention and engagement and insists that marketers must adopt a zero-based mentality for channel strategy, ensuring every touchpoint is intentional, relevant, and distinctive to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

“Marketers must understand and plan for dual customer journeys: those of genAI tools and AI agents on the one hand, and those of humans evaluating their output on the other,” Cantor Ceurvorst says. “Human touchpoints will continue to become more scarce, so it matters to get each one right, creating an emotional connection to your brand that influences not just one decision but many choices over time.”