Fake news has become a major worldwide political and media theme for 2017.
"While fake news is currently in the public consciousness, it is important to realise the extent of digitally created content that is not a factual or authentic representation of information goes well beyond the news aspect," Gartner said in a statement.
For enterprises, this acceleration of content in a social media-dominated discourse presents a real problem.
"Enterprises need to not only monitor closely what is being said about their brands directly, but also in what contexts, to ensure they are not associated with content that is detrimental to their brand value," Gartner noted as the market research firm revealed top predictions for 2018 and beyond.
In 2020, artificial intelligence (AI) will become a positive net job motivator, creating 2.3 million jobs while eliminating only 1.8 million jobs.
AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates through 2019, however, Gartner believes that the number of jobs created due to AI in 2020 is sufficient to overcome the deficit.
"By 2020, AI-driven creation of "counterfeit reality" or fake content, will outpace AI's ability to detect it, fomenting digital distrust," the firm predicted.
"Technology-based innovation is arriving faster than most organisations can keep up with. Before one innovation is implemented, two others arrive," said Daryl Plummer, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, Distinguished.
"CIOs in end-user organisations will need to develop a pace that can be sustained no matter what the future holds," he added.
By 2021, early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual- and voice-search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30 per cent.
By 2020, five of the top seven digital giants will willfully "self-disrupt" to create their next leadership opportunity.
In doing new things, digital giants - such as Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Tencent - are likely to run into situations where their influence has grown so large that it is difficult to create new value scenarios.
"This ultimately leads to self-disruption. In a self-disrupting strategy, disruption arises as intentional intent to get there first, even if it is necessary to disrupt yourself. While this can be risky, risk of inaction can be even higher," Gartner said.
By the end of 2020, the banking industry will derive $1 billion in business value from the use of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.
By 2021, more than 50 per cent of enterprises will be spending more per annum on bots and chatbot creations than traditional mobile app developments.
"By 2021, 40 per cent of IT staff will be versatilists, holding multiple roles, most of which will be business, rather than technology-related," Gartner added.
By 2020, IoT technology will be in 95 per cent of electronics for new product designs.
Through 2022, half of all security budgets for IoT will go to fault remediation, recalls and safety failures rather than protection, Gartner said.