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India is on the right path to become a global AI hub with creating a robust AI governance framework, and top factors driving adoption in the country are accessibility of AI tools, need to reduce costs and automate and increase in AI embedded into off-the-shelf business applications, IT and software major IBM said on Thursday.

“The Indian government has given a much-needed thrust to AI and its adoption and investments by Indian enterprises, which ensuring responsible and trusted AI with help from the industry stakeholders. IBM is actively engaged with the government on creating guardrails around AI and its responsible use,” Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia, told IANS.

New research commissioned by the company found that about 59 per cent of enterprise-scale organisations in India have AI actively in use in their businesses.

The ‘IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023’ found early adopters are leading the way, with 74 per cent of those Indian enterprises already working with AI, having accelerated their investments in AI in the past 24 months in areas like R&D and workforce re-skilling.

However, “there is still a significant opportunity to accelerate as many businesses are hesitant to move beyond experimentation and deploy AI at scale,” Patel stressed.

To harness its full potential in the coming months, data and AI governance tools are going to be critical for building AI models responsibly that enterprises can trust and confidently adopt.

“Without the use of governance tools, AI can expose companies to data privacy issues, legal complications, and ethical dilemmas – cases of which we have already seen plaguing many across the world,” he noted.

Ongoing challenges for AI adoption remain, including hiring employees with the right skillsets and ethical concerns, inhibiting businesses from adopting AI technologies into their operations.

Nearly six in 10 of IT professionals at enterprises said their company is actively implementing generative AI and another 34 per cent are exploring it.

About 74 per cent of IT professionals at companies deploying or exploring AI indicate that their company has accelerated their investments in or rollout of AI in the past 24 months in areas like R&D (67 per cent), reskilling/workforce development (55 per cent) and building proprietary AI solutions (53 per cent).

The top five barriers hindering successful AI adoption at enterprises both exploring or deploying AI are?limited AI skills and expertise (30 per cent), lack of tools/platforms for developing AI models (28 per cent), AI projects are too complex or difficult to integrate and scale (27 per cent), ethical concerns (26 per cent) and too much data complexity (25 per cent), said the report.