Credit: Stock Source Studio/Adobe Stock
While organizations are beginning to work on artificial intelligence (AI) governance—from hiring to strategizing internal policy—many are struggling to deliver and report their procedures, according to a report from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) published last Wednesday.
The “2025 AI Governance Profession Report” found that, when it comes to delivering on AI governance, at least half of the challenges organizations face are internal. Although 77 percent of participants said their organization is working on AI governance, 49 percent noted a lack of understanding within their organization about AI compliance governance obligations. In addition, 49 percent of participants said challenges include a lack of understanding of AI and underlying technologies. For 39 percent of those surveyed, organizational AI expectations are not clearly defined or followed up on, while 37 percent said there are not enough AI resources to complete AI governance activities.
Recommended For You
“They’re all issues that relate to mismatched or lack of understanding across the organization—a mismatch of expectations across functions, across seniority levels, budget constraints, a shortage of people,” IAPP director of research and insights Joe Jones told Legaltech News. “A lot of these challenges start at home [with] getting the internal house in order, so that is a pattern. … This is not just an AI governance issue; this is across the gamut of digital policy.”
When it comes to how participants describe their company’s AI governance budget, with respect to its AI governance obligations and objectives, 64 percent of participants said budgets are somewhat or much less than sufficient. Jones said that, for AI governance professionals, specifically asking for money in their budget in order to meet compliance obligations may not be as effective as pitching the idea that more money in the budget for AI governance “will help innovation: Getting this right is going to be a business strategic enabler.”
As for the challenges facing organizations reporting on AI governance, 61 percent of respondents said there is an absence of tangible metrics on AI governance, while 51 percent said there is a lack of maturity of AI governance within their organization, which hinders reporting to the board. In addition, 55 percent said AI risk management has yet to be fully established within the organization. “I think we've seen a lot of articles about how organizations have this feeling that AI is helping the organization, but they can’t necessarily measure it,” said IAPP AI governance research fellow Richard Sentinella. “The strategic aspect of AI governance—making sure that it aligns with the company’s goals—they’re getting what they want out of AI. … It’s hard to measure that if you don’t necessarily have a specific ROI.”
Within these organizations, certain staff members are tasked with AI governance responsibilities. In 57 percent of respondents’ organizations, those are privacy professionals, and at 55 percent they include legal and compliance professionals. Because of their common track record of keeping up with data compliance and governance, the AI governance torch is also often passed over to privacy professionals, Jones said.
“The GDPR [the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation] data protection impact assessment is being used and leveraged toward the [EU] AI Act fundamental rights impact assessment,” he used as an example. “Transparency notices are being used in ways that support efforts to communicate to consumers, to customers, and supply chains about what you are doing and how you are doing it when it comes to explainability, so there’s a lot of that muscle memory and the documentation that is also being leveraged.”
In terms of whether participants are confident that their organization is capable of being compliant with the EU AI Act, 52 percent of respondents said they are somewhat or totally confident.
The 2025 report received its insights from 671 professionals from different organizations surveyed in the spring of 2024.
————————————————————
From: Legaltech News
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
