Job applicants are getting crafty by using deepfakes to disguise faces, voices, and even identities to secure remote job interviews and succeed in virtual interviews. This is a threat to businesses because bad actors can execute nefarious activities if they are hired. Chief information security officers (CISOs) and HR leaders must put measures in place to detect this deception and protect their business from digital fraud.
AI vendors and payment platforms are weaving checkout into LLMs so users can buy flights, clothes, and more without leaving the chat window. In the future, consumers will make retail decisions based on LLM results rather than web searches. Tech leaders must help their businesses get ahead of the LLM checkout wave or risk being left behind.
ISO/IEC 42001 is the world’s first international standard for managing AI responsibly. It provides a formal AI Management System framework to help AI developers embed governance and transparency into their AI. IT leaders and AI teams can embed this standard into procurement to ensure that their businesses only adopt auditable, trustworthy, and ethical AI.
Not every IT challenge requires an expensive, high-performance AI solution. As AI hype pushes businesses toward transformers and LLMs, many use cases are suitable for simpler, cheaper solutions. CIOs and IT leaders who recognize this will be able to pair the right AI with the right problem while maximizing performance and optimizing spending.
Vibe coding has accelerated software development through rapid prototyping. However, the generated code may not match what is required sometimes. Spec-driven development can solve this problem by constraining AI’s creative wiggle room. CIOs and IT leaders can harness spec-driven development to ensure that AI-generated code is more consistent, accurate, and auditable.
The October 29, 2025 MIT Iceberg Index headline finding is that visible AI adoption in tech accounts for only 2.2% of wage value, while “below the waterline” cognitive work across offices in industries like finance, and professional services pushes technical exposure to 11.7% in the US. For big organizations, this is less of a sci-fi speculation and more of a planning KPI. If 10–15% of your wage bill is doing skills that tools can already replicate, your real risk is being out-executed by peers that quietly turn that into lower operating costs and faster cycle times.
Deploying AI in the cloud is convenient and streamlines operations. However, this approach may not be suitable for SMEs facing compliance, privacy, and budget constraints. AI deployments in an air-gapped environment may be suitable to decrease the risk of data leaks and unpredictable cloud costs. CIOs can help their SMEs to maintain full control over data, cost, and regulatory alignment without cloud exposure by using air-gapped environments.
AI tools are flooding the market due to the current AI boom. It becomes harder for SMEs to discover suitable tools for their needs in this crowded marketplace of tools. A well-structured AI technology radar can help provide direction and reduce adoption risks. This allows CIOs and SMEs to save resources, reduce budgets, and embrace AI tools that provide the best ROI.
AI continues to advance the speed and accuracy of healthcare delivery. Google’s MedGemma and MedSigLIP are new open-weight models tailored for medical use. Unlike general-purpose AI, these specialized models help minimize hallucinations. IT leaders in small and medium-sized medical practices can look at these specialized models to deploy safer and more reliable AI-driven support for healthcare professionals.
AI-generated visual effects (VFX) are reducing production budgets and timelines for large production studios. These visual effects can range from replacing a green screen with a desired environment to generating explosions for an action scene. With AI, video editors and content creators in media houses can punch above their weight and create high-quality visual effects once out of reach due to budget and in-house tech limitations.