# What are the 3 levels of AI adoption in a business? > Justas Butkus is a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, founder of AINORA, MB – the company behind the Ainora and Impetora brands – and a graduate of Vilnius University. Justas Butkus is a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, working with mid-market companies and scale-ups across the UK, EU and US at two to four days a month. He builds and operates the production AI systems he advises on, and takes no commission, referral fee or revenue share from any vendor. Video: The 3 Levels of AI Adoption in a Business (Beyond ChatGPT) (https://youtu.be/9xgBet5mv1E) **The 3 levels of AI adoption in a business are: level 1, your team using chat tools, with training on how to prompt them; level 2, systems built on top of the work you already do, such as answering and qualifying calls and following up, so nobody has to learn anything new; and level 3, a company brain that your best five to ten people train so everyone else works at their level. Most companies have not started yet. All three aim at the same result: the same team serves more customers at roughly the same cost, so profit goes up.** Canonical: https://justasbutkus.com/answers/3-levels-of-ai-adoption/ Last updated: 2026-10-19 --- ## Why is a chat subscription not the whole answer? If you already pay for chat tool subscriptions and train your staff to use them, you are ahead of most companies. A lot of courses sell that as the silver bullet. It is only the first of three levels, and that lead will not last. The idea behind all three is the same: keep your headcount roughly where it is, with nobody let go, and make the same people more productive. You serve customers better, maybe charge more, maybe take on more of them. Revenue goes up while hard costs stay roughly flat, and that difference is profit. ## What is level 1 of AI adoption? Level 1 is your team using chat tools. You buy the subscriptions, then show people that the tools can be trusted, how to prompt them properly and how to work with them. The next step inside level 1 is letting staff connect those tools to what you already run, so the assistant can reach your email, your database or your CRM and do productive work there. This is very good, but it is quite limited, and that is where level 2 comes in. ## What is level 2 of AI adoption? Level 2 is automating jobs with AI: calling leads, taking inbound calls, and handling customer requests and disputes by email, messenger or phone. Take inbound calls from people asking for a quote. Many callers are unqualified, and that wears a sales team out. I know this from experience, because I used to make a lot of cold calls: after three bad calls, the fourth is the real prospect, and you meet it less energetic and less prepared. Some leads only want to place an order, but some need persuading, and those are the ones a tired team loses. At level 2 a system takes that incoming traffic and filters it. It can also follow up with people who asked for something in the past and never heard back, and there is money sitting there. Can it close the deal itself? For simple orders, where people know exactly what they want, yes. But that is not the goal. AI does not have a person's emotional read, it is a programmable system. Its job is to filter out the weaker and more negative callers, so your best reps get the best leads while they are fresh. That is where more sales and better clients come from. ## Why does level 2 need no retraining? A new tool or a new CRM means training and migrating everybody. Level 2 skips that: your sales people pick up the same phone and open the same CRM. The work is outlining your processes. You explain to the system how each kind of conversation goes: is it a support ticket or a product sale, what are that product's criteria, and what must the customer answer before you can quote. In practice you draw one very big tree of every call flow. Branches you do not want AI handling go straight to a person. The point is to see everything that is repetitive, because that is the part a system can take. The free prompt linked in the video's description is a first pass at that map: paste it into a chat tool and it interviews you about your company's repetitive conversations and follow-ups. ## What is level 3 of AI adoption? Level 3 is more complicated, for a good reason. Picture a company with fifty accountants. The top five or ten do the best work. The rest vary, yet you pay them roughly the same, and clients get different quality under one brand. At level 3 those top five to ten people train one AI system everybody can use, one that prepares documents and communicates with clients. It is called a [company brain](/company-brain/). Once it is trained, the other forty or so work at your best people's level. Customers get a better experience, and you can charge more, take on more customers, or handle work you could not before. It is not a closed box that works while you do nothing. It sits in the team chat you already use, or you email it. You tell it what needs doing, it follows how it was instructed, and when it has a question it asks. Tell it to do something differently and it corrects its own notes, so it gets more precise every time. It can also fill in your old CRM, go to websites and click buttons. Access is set per person: accounting sees what accounting needs, sales what sales needs. Often only those top five to ten people can change its skills, and everyone else sends requests. ## Where are most companies today? Most are at level 0: not using it, not touching it, a little scared of it. I would expect that to change over the next two or three years as adoption moves on. **The levels of AI adoption at a glance** | Level | What it is | What your team has to change | | --- | --- | --- | | Level 0 | Not started | Nothing yet | | Level 1 | Chat tool subscriptions, training on how to prompt, connections to email, database and CRM | Learn to use the tools | | Level 2 | Systems on top of repetitive work: inbound calls, lead calls, follow-ups, customer requests | Nothing: same phone, same CRM | | Level 3 | A company brain trained by your best five to ten people | The best people train it, everyone else uses it | ## Frequently asked questions ### Does adopting AI mean cutting staff? Not in this approach. You keep headcount roughly the same and make the same people more productive, so costs stay flat while revenue rises. ### Can AI close sales on its own? For simple orders, where the customer knows exactly what they want, yes. It is not the goal, though: at level 2 its job is to filter and qualify, and hand the best leads to your best people. ### Do my staff need to learn a new tool for level 2? No. Unlike a new CRM, nobody is retrained or migrated. Your team keeps the same phone and the same CRM, and calls you do not want AI handling go straight to a person. ### Who trains a company brain? Your best five to ten people, the ones whose work you want everyone else to match. They shape its skills, and everyone else uses it and sends requests for changes. ## Related - [The company brain](/company-brain/) – Level 3 in full: what it holds and how it works. - [A company brain or the assistant you pay for?](/company-brain/vs-an-ai-assistant/) – Why level 1 and level 3 are different things. - [Implementing without getting burned](/answers/how-to-implement-ai-without-getting-burned/) – What to check before you commit budget or headcount. ## About the author **Justas Butkus** – a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, founder of AINORA, MB – the company behind the Ainora and Impetora brands – and a graduate of Vilnius University. ## If you are not sure which level you are at Describe the conversations your team repeats every week in a short email. That is usually enough to see which level the next step belongs to. Contact: justas@ainora.lt · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/justas-butkus/)