Bring Your Own AI — (BYOAI)

Harnessing the Employee-Driven AI Revolution

Executive Summary: The bring-your-own-AI (BYOAI) trend poses strategic opportunities and risks. While enabling workforce creativity, uncontrolled bottom-up AI adoption creates governance challenges. Organizations that embrace BYOAI as a competitive advantage while establishing oversight for responsibility and security will thrive. The rise of low-code AI and AI at the edge represents another challenging “iPhone moment” for enterprise AI.

As an AI advocate and consultant, I’m often asked how organizations should manage bring-your-own-AI (BYOAI) — employees introducing and building their own AI tools and capabilities. This grassroots adoption signals engaged workers, but uncontrolled implementation risks severe security, ethical and governance issues. Based on my recent research, smart organizations must strategically harness BYOAI by embracing it while erecting sensible guardrails for alignment and responsibility.