The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) among Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME’s) has gained significant momentum across various industries. South African SMME’s plays a pivotal role in job creation, contributing significantly to the counties GPD, and they are a driving force behind innovation and entrepreneurship. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the landscape, altering business practices and models. South African. SMME’s are struggling to keep up with the evolving landscape. Scholarly work points out that there’s fragmented and inconsistent understanding of AI Adoption among SMME’s and large enterprises. These SMMEs continue to face challenges in the Adoption of AI due to some contributing factors such as inadequate infrastructure, financial burden and inefficient digital skills. The study aims to develop an AI Readiness model that will assist SMME’s to successfully adopt AI. The study will employ a review of existing literature and develop a model that will assist successful adoption of AI to be simple and practical. The model will assist in assessing current business readiness, capacity gaps and providing a guide on how SMME’s can adopt AI successfully.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Adoption, AI Readiness Model, Adoption Barriers, and SMME’s