UK businesses are more excited about AI than ever before — but many are split on where the responsibility lies

• IBM study reveals enthusiasm for AI integration, but division on governance
• AI-related incidents are increasingly becoming a board problem
• Leaders are split on who should accept liability when it comes to AI incidents

Businesses are increasingly excited to expand and evolve their AI deployments, but efforts to stay aware of potential risks and challenges are falling behind, new research has claimed.

A report from IBM surveying over 3,000 business leaders across the EMEA region found 80% of those surveyed said that an AI-related incident - such as an agent failure, data exposure, AI-driven decision error, or AI security breach - had reached their board or C-suite over the past year.

Despite this, fewer than half (40%) of those organisations said they would be changing their AI governance policy or frameworks as a response, showing a potential governance gap emerging for businesses of all kinds.

AI debate

These issues are particularly concerning as AI becomes a cornerstone of work processes for many businesses, taking on more responsibility day by day.

The survey found three-quarters (75%) of respondents expected AI agents to have some level of autonomy with respect to making decisions by 2027 - however only 37% believed their governance is designed to scale with agentic AI deployment.

Nearly all executives (98%) surveyed have formally assigned responsibility for AI risk at board level, including 26% with a dedicated board-level AI committee, showing that awareness is there, but clearly there is still work to be done.

This includes establishing liability frameworks to cover off when AI agents might make their own decisions, with views on legal liability still split among respondents.

This includes building out formal legal or contractual frameworks defining AI vendor liability for agent failures (33%), defined human escalation thresholds (32%), real-time monitoring and audit trails of agent decisions and actions (30%) and the ability to immediately halt agent activity across the enterprise (29%).

“The AI debate has moved from adoption to governance and accountability,” noted Ana Paula Assis, IBM Senior Vice President and Chair, EMEA and APAC.

“As organizations progress from AI assistants to autonomous agents, governance can no longer be treated as a compliance exercise. It has become a business requirement and value enabler.

“The enterprises that can scale AI with accountability and trust will be the ones that realize the greatest business value. That means governance must be built into how agents operate, with clear boundaries on what they can do, clear ownership when things go wrong, and controls that work in real-time.”