en.Wedoany.com Reported - Elife Portugal has launched the AIhub community in Porto, aiming to bridge the gap between brands and professionals, promote best practice sharing, and accelerate the practical application of artificial intelligence in marketing and communications.
In a statement, the company said the core goal of the initiative is to "empower the market to learn, question, and progress," leveraging real-world cases and organizational experience to drive adoption. Currently, the Portuguese business community still shows some resistance to the application of AI technology.
Citing the latest data from Eurostat and the Portuguese National Statistics Institute (INE), Elife Portugal noted that only 11.5% of Portuguese companies use AI, ranking the country 20th in the European Union. The main barrier to this low adoption rate is considered to be "insufficient internal knowledge," cited by 74.4% of organizations.
In contrast, marketing has become the second most widely applied field for AI in Portugal (36.9%), highlighting the rationale for creating this focused ecosystem. William Ferreira, CRM+AI Operations Director at Elifegroup, emphasized in the statement: "AIhub was born to combat 'empty theory.' We want to showcase what truly works, through learning from real cases, trends, and authentic experiences."
The project has a physical space on Rua da Restauração in Porto, serving as a meeting point for lectures, roundtables, hands-on workshops, and hackathons focused on AI and social listening. The hub will also be open to collaboration with universities, associations, media, and enterprises to co-organize events. The first free in-person event is scheduled for July 9 at 10:00 AM, themed "Synthetic Consumers," a technology that uses AI to replicate the values and behaviors of real people's "personas." According to the company, this method allows brands to test campaigns and products among "synthetic audiences" before official launches, simulating market reactions and predicting potential crises. A webinar on the same topic will also be held on July 16 at 11:00 AM.
