AI capabilities in the AV industry are obviously accelerating rapidly—and with them comes a series of challenges. These include considerations around ethics and transparency about how AI is used, as well as training to ensure that teams across multiple parts of every business are using AI in a responsible way.
While the industry continues to navigate those challenges, it’s important to have some kind of formal accountability framework to keep everyone on the same page. Unfortunately, those frameworks have lagged behind the speed of development of AI tools.
That’s why we were really pleased to see the introduction of a new standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 42001 is the world’s first AI management system standard, and it provides valuable guidance for the fast moving world of AI deployment.
What is ISO 42001?
According to the ISO, the standard is designed to “set out a structured way to manage risks and opportunities associated with AI, balancing innovation with governance.” It specifies the requirements for an organization to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve an Artificial Intelligence Management System (AIMS) within organizations.
ISO 42001 supports businesses as they consider what they need when rolling out AI. It covers whatever AI tools are being used, as well as how best to manage AI projects, including the assessment and mitigation of risks.
The ISO outlines its target users for 42001 as organizations "providing or utilizing AI-based products or services" and its objective as making sure those organizations have the guidance they need to use AI responsibly and effectively, even while the technology continues to evolve.
Consider all this, we felt it was important for Pleneo to follow the standards set out by ISO 42001, and were pleased to be the first device manufacturer in AV and unified communications to achieve the certification laid out by the standard. But why is it important that not just us but the wider industry adheres to standardization like this? And how does it actually keep companies, particularly tech companies, accountable?
Responsibility and Compliance
One of the biggest considerations for AI adoption is making sure that you’re using tools in line with regulations and in the most responsible way. There are a lot of ethical concerns over the data that’s used to train neural networks and models. If data is from an unverifiable source, there might be issues around ownership or biases being embedded into a final product or service. This unverifiable data is what stops people from trusting many AI products, as does the environmental impact of large AI applications.
Trust is going to be key for the entire industry as AI adoption continues.
The governance around how you use and manage data in your systems also ties into the correct use of AI. The ethical and responsible considerations aside, any organization using AI must be compliant with regulations and legal requirements. As the technology continues to be rolled out, there’s only going to be more regulations on the way.
The ISO 42001 framework, and its adoption of the PDCA—or Plan-Do-Check-Act—methodology ensure that companies are continually reviewing their use of AI data across their business to make sure they’re in line and compliant. For Pleneo in particular, the certification validates the approach we’ve taken to embedding AI technologies within our platforms. We’re not leaning on larger datasets available to public-facing AI tools but are instead processing intelligence locally.
It’s this data processing that the ISO 42001 standard addresses. We know that our use of AI reduces cloud dependency and preserves privacy. And with this standard, we’re able to demonstrate to our users a responsibility with our AI adoption, and that they can trust our AI tools in the same way as any other products in our lineup. Trust is going to be key for the entire industry as AI adoption continues.
Guidance and Opportunity
Businesses across all industries are appointing AI evangelists within their ranks. The AV industry is no different. Regardless of whether they’re new hires or people taking on the mantle within existing roles, many are working with AI for the first time. ISO 42001 provides those people, and organizations more widely, with practical guidance on how to deploy AI in many different ways, and how to mitigate AI-specific risks effectively when they arise.
Handling these sorts of issues more easily opens the door to innovation. Less time spent handling risks means more time taking advantage of the opportunities that AI presents across things like product and service development. That’s what is possible with the right framework in place thanks to the standards outlined by ISO 42001.
For the Pro AV sector, and for modern workspaces in particular, AI is influencing how meetings are prioritized, interpreted, and experienced. Oversight of the technology needs to extend beyond data protection to the integrity and predictability of automated decision making itself.
Formal governance standards like those from ISO will set mature platforms apart from experimental implementations. This is what ensures that intelligent meeting environments are viewed not as emerging technology, but as reliable, accountable enterprise systems.
