accountability and trust. Building on that trust is IBM’s newest offering, watsonx.governance, the third component in the watsonx platform that also includes watsonx.ai and watsonx.data. Watsonx.governance is designed to help businesses mitigate model risk, detect, manage, and automatically enforce regulatory requirements and address ethical concerns. IBM’s generative AI platform allows businesses to direct, manage, and monitor their AI activities and workflows with responsibility, transparency, and auditability. IBM’s end-to-end lifecycle approach safeguards against biases, misuse, and misalignment in AI outputs, and its dashboard offers a unique inventory process through “model cards” that are like nutrition labels, where critical information about the model’s composition and data source is provided for advanced analytics. 

Using foundational models built with responsible AI approaches in mind, including data transparency, businesses can mitigate risk, protect their brand, and expand generative AI workflows for a growing number of tangible, real-world enterprise use cases.  

Realizing Generative AI for Enterprise Applications

Unlocking the full potential of generative AI involves not only harnessing its technical capabilities but doing so accurately, ethically, and responsibly. With the proper guardrails in place, businesses can then accelerate their adoption of generative AI workflows, streamline processes, and automate tasks across virtually every functional area—comfortably, confidently, and well beyond what is being done today. By intelligently applying AI and generative AI to do what it does best—such as summarizing large data sets and automating many manual tasks—businesses can repurpose human workers to higher-value and creative tasks. 

Realizing the potential of generative AI is possible now with enterprise-grade platforms that leverage responsible models, such as IBM’s watsonx. IBM has some great, tangible AI business applications today and will have even more in the near future as new use cases continue to evolve. IBM is currently developing its first set of foundation models for real-world business applications with large language models (LLMs), IT automation models, digital labor models, cybersecurity models, and many more to come.

Enterprises can now begin to deploy generative AI platforms that free up businesses to focus on managing outcomes and expansion versus risk. This makes concepts like digital labor a reality today. IBM is already helping companies remove menial, repetitive, and programmable tasks across marketing, sales, finance, and human resources. Digital employees can communicate, sequence skills on the fly, and put those skills into context by maintaining working memory of past interactions. Workers are able to command, train, and delegate work to digital employees when working on simple tasks and even with more complex decision-making. Finance is relying on digital labor for data analysis, customer care for automated responses, and HR for employee communications. Watsonx is also being used for application modernization and code generation, transforming the work experience for hundreds of thousands of employees while helping businesses protect their brands. With the proper foundation in place, there’s virtually no limit to what generative AI can do, now or in the future.

Charting a Path to Responsible and Reliable AI  

While many businesses are rapidly racing to realize generative AI's potential, a rush to adoption without the proper guardrails in place is sure to end with dire, Wild West consequences. Protecting employees, customers, and brands will take a thoughtful approach, with ethics and accuracy an absolute must.  

Using a trusted AI model with the ability to meet the needs of each use case will ensure ethical, as well as accurate and reliable, content creation and positive business outcomes. Partnering with a generative AI technology partner such as IBM can help streamline the AI implementation process, as models from reliable collaborators can be harnessed, eliminating the need for businesses to start from scratch. Approaches like those being used by IBM’s watson.x platform can provide the foundation and the ability to scale generative AI across enterprise organizations. It can also help usher in a new era of digital labor and workforce enhancement that can unlock true value, accelerate growth, and go a long way toward taming the AI Wild West.