AI use by directors and boards: Early insights

As organisations globally begin to embed AI in their operations and business strategies, boardroom conversations are shifting from ‘how do we govern AI’ to ‘how does AI help us govern’?

The AICD’s new resource, AI use by directors and boards: Early insights  delves into this question, examining AI use bydirectors and within boardrooms.

With AI adoption in Australian boardrooms still at an early stage, this resource offers a starting point for boards to openly discuss the role of AI in their own governance practices, today and into the future.

Key insights

The resource draws on interviews with chairs, non-executive directors and experts from a range of organisations, and explores: current and emerging AI use cases for directors and boards; the potential impacts on the role of directors, chairs and company secretaries; and the broader governance implications. 

Key insights from this engagement include:

• Directors and boards are cautious about AI use for governance purposes and practice is still relatively limited, although evolving.
• Organisational barriers to adoption include a lack of director access to enterprise AI systems, restrictive internal policies and legal risks.
• There is a two-speed dynamic at play, with collective board use of AI lagging ‘shadow’ individual director use.
• Boards should openly discuss how AI can enhance deliberations and what role AI can play to support high quality management reporting.
• Directors should take care to ensure their use of AI does not undermine confidence in management or blur lines of accountability.

This resource includes a series of use cases of the potential benefits from targeted and considered AI use by boards. For example, machine learning techniques offer the potential for an audit committee to understand trends and anomalies across audit reports and financial papers that then can prompt closer scrutiny. Prior to this use, relevant board committees should agree to parameters around AI adoption, including necessary procedures andcontrols.

The resource also has the central message that there is no substitute for a director’s own critical analysis and curiosity – use of AI tools or digital twins should be carefully managed, including to ensure that they don’t compound blind spots or limit thinking.

AI agents will not replace the role of directors and the human oversight of Australian organisations. Australian law is clear that only natural people can be directors and more importantly there is a threshold community expectation that the weight and sensitivity of the decisions made by boards appropriately reside with humans.

The resource builds on the AICD’s existing suite of resources relating to AI governance, including A Director’s Introduction to AI, A Director’s Guide to AI Governance (both in partnership with the UTS Human Technology Institute), Effective board minutes and the use of AI: A joint statement (in partnership with the Governance Institute of Australia) and the AI Fluency for Directors Sprint (delivered in partnership with The University of Sydney).

From Australian to US boardrooms: insights from our director roundtable with OpenAI

In November 2025, the AICD hosted a roundtable with OpenAI’s Chief Economist, Dr. Ronnie Chatterji, and senior directors to explore AI’s impact – from national competitiveness and workforce transitions to enterprise deployment. A key focus was the growing but sometimesoverlooked role of AI in the boardroom. Other key discussion points were:

• Australia is seeing a gap between its strong consumer adoption of AI and slower enterprise adoption. This is attributable, in part, to many organisations being stuck in ‘pilot purgatory’ and struggling to progress use cases beyond initial experimentation;
• Boards need to start with a mindset of value creation and consider how a business starting today would build AI into its business model. There is too often a focus on cost-cutting or replacing certain operational processes with AI processes, rather than on aligning use cases with broader organisational strategy and revenue generation; and
• Participants observed fast-evolving generative and agentic AI use cases in the areas of payments and open commerce. AI agents are helping merchants efficiently identify wholesale prices and are creating ‘consumer surplus’ that is valuable to the economy.

Participants also highlighted how limited director-level AI use has been to date – even in Fortune 500 firms, where AI adoption is more prevalent across the economy. While they raised concerns about governance risks as agentic AI spreads across organisations, they also pointed to high-value board applications, from sharper ideation and strategy development to helping counter bias in deliberations.

Continue the conversation on AI in the boardroom – new virtual event

On 11 February 2026 at 12pm AEDT, the AICD will host a national virtual event on ‘AI in the Boardroom’. The event will delve further into the themes of the AICD’s new resource, building on early insights into how directors and boards are using AI in practice.

Members are invited to explore how AI is reshaping governance, where it can add value, and the new risks and safeguards boards need to consider. Register to be part of the conversation.