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Retailers tamp down shadow AI but struggle to oversee agentic sprawl

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Retailers tamp down shadow AI but struggle to oversee agentic sprawl

The use of AI agents is soaring in the retail sector, but visibility remains a major challenge, with regulated data at risk.

Retailers have tightened their grips on employees’ use of AI, Netskope found, to the point that most tools are centrally managed rather than individually installed. The share of retail employees using ungoverned AI tools fell from 70% to 44% since Netskope’s last annual report, while the share of employees using officially approved tools rose from 40% to 73%. Overall, two-thirds of retail employees use some form of standalone AI tool.

But that good news comes with a caveat, according to the report, because standalone AI tools aren’t the only security risk facing organizations. Nearly all retail employees reported using software that contained AI features, and 90% said they used AI tools that are trained on customer data.

“As this adoption continues to grow,” Netskope researchers wrote, “retailers face a greater challenge in understanding where sensitive information is being shared and how it may be used, both through direct interactions with AI tools and through AI functionality operating in the background.”

Those visibility challenges can have serious consequences for retailers if their lack of oversight leads to the exposure of customer data. Of all the AI-related data policy violations that Netskope tracked, 56% involved data subject to federal or state regulation. ) Customer data breaches can have serious reputational and regulatory consequences for retailers, particularly those in competitive markets.



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