Organizations were surveyed by Conversica on artificial intelligence (AI) use and opinions. For organizations already adopting AI, 86% agree on the critical importance of having clearly established guidelines for the responsible use of AI. The percentage was 73% among all respondents.

However, 6% of companies have policies in place for the responsible use of AI. And among organizations planning to adopt AI in the next 12 months, 5% have policies.

One in five business leaders at companies who use AI have limited or no knowledge about their company's policies concerning the critical issues associated with the use of AI including security, transparency, accuracy and ethics. Thirty-six percent claim to be only 'somewhat familiar' with these issues.

According to respondents, the most challenging aspects of making informed decisions about the use of AI in their companies are the lack of resources for data security and transparency (43%), and difficulty with finding a provider that has ethical standards that are aligned with those of the company (40%).

Within the following year, business leaders said they intend to use AI for ‘external engagement’, i.e. customer service/support and marketing/sales outreach (39%). ‘Insights’ including fraud detection, data analytics and predictive modeling came in at a close second (36%).

Among those that have already adopted the technology, the top three concerns about its use are the lack of transparency (22%), the accuracy of data models (20%) and false information (21%).

Respondents whose companies had no plans to adopt AI-powered services in the next year mostly said they don’t have any concerns about AI (29%). For the respondents who did express a concern, their top choice was ‘legal implications, patent infringements, plagiarism and copyright violations’ (11%).

When asked to what extent they viewed false information generated by AI as a significant concern for their company, 77% of total respondents rated this as either ‘Concerning’ or ‘Very concerning.’ This figure was higher (88%) for respondents whose companies already have AI-powered solutions in place, indicating that business leaders with more business experience with AI have better awareness of the possible brand risks associated with improper usage.

When it comes to employee use of popular AI-based tools like ChatGPT, the majority of respondents (56%) said that their company either already has rules in place, or is considering implementing a usage policy.

Read the full report here.