  Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful technology that
improves system performance and enables new features in 5G and beyond.
Standardization, defining functionality and interfaces, is essential for
driving the industry alignment required to deliver the mass adoption of AI in
5G-Advanced and 6G. However, fragmented efforts in different standards bodies,
such as the third generation partnership project (3GPP) and the open radio
access network (O-RAN) Alliance, can lead to confusion and uncertainty about
which standards to follow and which aspects of the standards to embrace. This
article provides a joint 3GPP and O-RAN perspective on the state of the art in
AI adoption in mobile communication systems, including the fundamentals of 5G
architecture and its evolution towards openness and intelligence, AI for
5G-Advanced evolution, and a case study on AI-enabled traffic steering. We also
identify several areas for future exploration to accelerate AI adoption on the
path towards 6G.
