Shadow AI — the use of AI tools under the radar of IT departments — has information technology directors and executives worried, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report, based on a survey of 200 IT directors and executives at U.S. enterprise organizations of 1,000 employees or more, found nearly half the IT pros (46%) were “extremely worried” about shadow AI, and almost all of them (90%) were concerned about it from a privacy and security viewpoint.
“As our survey found, shadow AI is resulting in palpable, concerning outcomes, with nearly 80% of IT leaders saying it has resulted in negative incidents such as sensitive data leakage to Gen AI tools, false or inaccurate results, and legal risks of using copyrighted information,” said Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of Campbell, Calif.-based Komprise, the unstructured data management company that produced the report.
“Alarmingly, 13% say that shadow AI has caused financial or reputational harm to their organizations,” she told TechNewsWorld.
Subramanian added that shadow AI poses a much greater problem than shadow IT, which primarily focuses on departmental power users purchasing cloud instances or SaaS tools without obtaining IT approval.
