BENGALURU: From treating responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a mere compliance issue, businesses have now started viewing it as a key contributor to AI-related revenue growth for their firm. According to Accenture findings, 43% of surveyed companies said that responsible AI is an important contributor to protecting their brand's value, while 24% of firms view responsible AI as simply a 'cost of doing business'.
About 13% surveyed find responsible AI is not critical to using AI as C-suite perceptions are differing across businesses. About 36% of firms view it as shaping the core AI strategy. The survey respondents predicted that when a company becomes a pioneer in responsible AI, its AI-related revenue will increase by 18%, on average. AI-related revenue is the total revenue generated by AI-enabled products and services.
It points out that the opposite is also true. "When responsible AI is not well-established in a company, brand value can be quickly destroyed with its misuse," it said. The survey respondents estimated that a single major, AI-related incident would, on average, erase 24% of the value of their firm’s market capitalisation.
Of the companies surveyed, 42% already devote more than 10% of their overall AI budget to responsible AI initiatives. A growing number of companies are prioritising responsible AI and are spending accordingly.
Accenture also found in its study that companies across APAC including India are accelerating AI adoption to drive productivity and revenue growth, and 9 out of 10 organisations plan to use agentic AI models in the next three years.
"As businesses across APAC deal with change and disruption, they recognise that success lies in embracing flexibility and finding new sources of efficiency and growth by using technology. They have increased their investments in AI, but the majority are finding it difficult to extract the right value from this investment. To effectively scale AI, particularly generative and agentic AI, businesses need to invest in building trust among their people and their customers, ensure they have the right data foundation, and operationalise responsible AI. That’s the only way of creating long term, sustainable value," said Ryoji Sekido, Co-CEO of APAC and CEO of Asia Oceania, Accenture.
It has recommended establishing AI governance and principles to APAC CXOs. The findings also point out that AI risk assessments should be conducted in order to evaluate AI risks, including fairness, transparency, accuracy and human impact, using structured assessments. It also recommends addressing workforce impact, sustainability, privacy and security apart from establishing real-time AI monitoring systems and executing mitigation and compliance actions.
Saurabh Kumar Sahu, MD and Lead for India Business, Accenture, said, “As businesses in India increasingly embrace AI and generative AI, the importance of responsible AI adoption cannot be overstated. Ensuring human-centered, fair, safe, and sustainable AI is crucial for building trust and driving the right outcomes. The government’s IndiaAI mission is a strategic step in this direction. For India to emerge as a global leader in AI, all stakeholders must collectively focus on three essential pillars – responsible AI development and deployment across the entire value chain, skilling at scale, and wide scale adoption.”