Businesses are no longer using AI just to draft text or answer questions. It's increasingly being employed to write code, handle transactions, and inform decisions. Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report found that 74% of leaders expect their organizations to use AI agents at least moderately by 2027. Yet only 21% have a mature governance model for agentic AI. That gap may matter more than the technology. The issue might be less about what AI can do and more about who verifies it before it acts.
Written policies might not always mean governance. In EY's September 2026 survey of senior AI executives at large US companies, almost all reported formal AI governance policies. Yet 26% of those using agentic AI said their organization could not detect unauthorized AI agents operating internally. When an agent acts on a flawed output, the error could pass straight into live operations before anyone notices.
