AI-related incidents are reaching corporate boards and C-suites across Europe and the Middle East, but companies are not changing their governance systems at the same pace, according to new research from IBM.
IBM said 80% of surveyed executives reported that an AI-related incident had reached their board or C-suite during the past year. Yet only 40% said their organization changed AI governance policies or frameworks in response.
The findings point to a widening gap between enterprise AI deployment and the controls companies have in place to manage it, particularly as businesses move from generative AI pilots toward autonomous and agentic systems.
Only 37% of respondents said their organization’s AI governance was designed to scale with agentic AI, according to IBM. The company said the results show risk accountability and governance capabilities are lagging behind adoption.
The issue is becoming more urgent as AI agents move into production environments and take on tasks that can involve company data, software systems and business decisions with less direct human intervention. That raises new questions about who is responsible when an agent makes an error, violates policy or takes an unintended action.
The gap could become more consequential as agentic AI spreads into more sensitive workflows, including finance, customer service, software development and operations. For companies, the challenge is shifting from whether to adopt AI to whether their governance systems can keep up with what those systems are being allowed to do.