GenAI and Agentic AI are not only on the rise; they have long been travelling in the fast lane. This has many positive effects and is resulting in initial efficiency gains, but there are also negative side effects. BYOAI is one of them: instead of waiting for a properly rolled out and organised company AI, employees use the chatbot or AI that is currently available and happily feed it with confidential data and facts. But since BYOAI is just as unstoppable as BYOD was in the past, CIOmover Carsten Osius is in favour of simply embracing the innovation potential and efficiency gains of BYOAI.
Let’s be honest: even with strict security guidelines and restrictive firewalls, hardly any company will be able to completely prevent the use of personal AI tools. Access to powerful AI tools is too easy and the individual efficiency gains too great for employees to voluntarily give them up just because some policy demands it of them.
Companies should therefore develop strategies at an early stage to control this trend through targeted guard rails, platform solutions and security mechanisms – on the condition that they get the security and compliance risks of BYOAI under control, which is particularly true for regulated companies, but should be controllable through strict governance and transparent processes. In regulated industries, Carsten adds, the use of external AI tools can be controlled primarily through strict security measures, whitelists and closed platforms. Others, such as media companies, “should rely on ‘controlled uncontrolled growth’ – through flexible guidelines that allow creative freedom and minimise risks in a targeted manner”.
Once these challenges have been overcome, all companies will benefit from AI as a creative driver of innovation, and more quickly than would be the case under the circumstances of a fully controlled deployment.
It is important to note that artificial intelligence offers enormous potential for increasing efficiency, as it can be used to automate routine tasks and accelerate complex analyses. However, this does not absolve BYOAI companies from the task of establishing clear guidelines for its use and at least minimising errors, data loss or security breaches through training measures. Only those companies that take a proactive approach here and enable their employees to use AI safely will be able to fully utilise the productivity potential of BYOAI.
It won’t work without a strategy
Even if BYOAI makes sense in practice and under the conditions mentioned, companies need a strategy in order to benefit from AI in the long term and even more so. In the long term, the desire of employees may not be the most viable concept after all, and the risk of failing with it certainly does not do justice to the immensely important function of AI for the future of companies.
CIOs are therefore always faced with the challenge of integrating new technologies quickly, but in a strategically sensible way, without jeopardising the central control mechanisms for data protection, cyber security and compliance.
