How IT and business leaders are managing generative AI governance amid explosive demand

In late 2023, 55% of those using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the workplace were doing so “without training, guidance, or approval by their employer,” according to a Salesforce survey. Given the meteoric rise in GenAI usage across the workplace (the user growth rate was nearly 900% in 2023), it’s likely that these types of rogue GenAI deployments will continue to increase.

With such explosive demand driven by equally lofty expectations, how can you monitor, govern, and control how your organization uses GenAI applications and technologies?

TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) surveyed IT professionals and business decision-makers to find out. Download "Beyond the GenAI Hype: Real-world Investments, Use Cases, and Concerns” to understand the analyst’s findings and recommendations. Or, read on for a quick summary.

GenAI demand is unstoppable

What’s opening organizations to undue risk is the fast and pervasive adoption driven by seemingly endless applications of GenAI. Legal teams can use it to evaluate contracts, marketing teams can use it to create ad copy and imagery, customer service teams can use it to personalize responses, engineers can use it to accelerate product development, and so much more.

The result, ESG says in the report, is that “GenAI is barreling forward with alarming momentum.” The widespread potential and the speed at which software vendors are adding it to their applications make GenAI easier and more attractive for workers to deploy and harder for organizations to manage.

Leaders in IT, security, compliance, risk management, and other areas of the business must take the lead on responsible yet rapid GenAI deployments. 

Proactively mitigate GenAI risks

Various groups throughout your organization are not only requesting GenAI applications, but they're actively implementing them without the approval of those responsible for minimizing risks and regulating the use of technology. That exposes your organization to many dangers, including GenAI’s “reputation for generating unreliable or untrustworthy data (called ‘hallucinations’ when a response is inaccurate, fictitious, or otherwise flawed),” according to ESG.

Two notable findings in ESG’s report are:

• More than one-third of respondents say their organization has policies in place to limit the use of GenAI.
• A mere 32% of respondents say they consider ethical or legal considerations their top GenAI priority.

Ultimately, two-thirds of organizations have yet to prioritize or act on mitigating GenAI risks, leaving them open to undue security, privacy, compliance, and other critical challenges.

In this analyst report, ESG aims to help you mitigate those and other risks by answering questions such as:

• What technology investments are needed to support GenAI initiatives?
• What are the biggest challenges organizations face in GenAI implementations?
• How do, or will, organizations ensure the security and privacy of data used in GenAI models?

Download the report to learn how to accelerate GenAI governance and responsible and trustworthy GenAI adoption

The results of ESG’s survey shed light on the GenAI adoption process, where GenAI is likely to be deployed in your organization, where GenAI challenges and threats can appear, and more. 

Download the ESG analyst report today to learn how you can get in front of the inevitable growth of GenAI applications throughout your organization.