The reaction of businesses to the introduction of generative AI (GenAI) in the year since the launch of Microsoft-backed ChatGPT is one of increasing suspicion and disappointment.
Over one in four organizations have banned the use of GenAI outright. The majority of companies are now also refusing to trust a technology that has already gained a reputation for making errors and even entirely fabricating information, a failing that is referred to as “hallucinating”.
According to Cisco’s newly-released 2024 Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 68 percent of organizations mistrust GenAI because it gets results wrong and 69 percent also believe it could hurt their company’s legal rights. The study draws on responses from 2,600 privacy and security professionals across 12 geographies.
Nor do companies trust that GenAI is in any way secure enough for sustained commercial use. Cisco reports that 68 percent of organizations cite the risk of disclosure of information to the public or competitors as another reason not to use GenAI. Companies are also starting to be concerned that the use of AI has serious implications for cybersecurity, with 23 percent citing avoiding data breaches as a chief concern.
Having failed to come up with any truly ground-breaking products for the last two decades and facing growing customer fatigue with smartphones and smartwatches, Big Tech saw GenAI as its potential salvation. It encouraged consumers to believe that AI would transform their existence in every way. Pundits and politicians also climbed on the AI bandwagon to avoid being seen to be left behind in the wake of Big Tech’s new AI-driven technological revolution.
The first GenAI offerings have not, however, lived up to the early hype. Politicians such as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who recently said that the power of AI posed as great a threat to humanity as nuclear war, may have been taken in by Big Tech’s marketing blitz. But businesses, ever-watchful of their bottom line, are less impressed by software that has been released in what was beta form at best.
According to Cisco, 27% of companies have already banned the use of GenAI throughout their organizations, at least temporarily and the majority of the others are exercising caution when it comes to staff use of GenAI, with 63 percent setting limitations on what can be entered. Sixty-seven percent have imposed limits on which GenAI tools can be used by employees. Sixty-nine percent of businesses cited the threats to an organization’s legal and intellectual property rights among the top concerns.
“Organizations see GenAI as a fundamentally different technology with novel challenges to consider,” said Dev Stahlkopf, Cisco’s Chief Legal Officer. “More than 90% of respondents believe GenAI requires new techniques to manage data and risk. This is where thoughtful governance comes into play. Preserving customer trust depends on it.”
