Articles

Articles on AI, automation and governance

Our view on what is changing in AI, automation and governance, and what it means for the people accountable for it.

The voice is the easy part

PolyAI says one UK bank's voice agent was built in about six weeks and governed in six months. Here is where the time goes, and what to put in front of your risk team in week 1.

5 min read

Voice AI

Containment is the wrong number

In PolyAI case studies and NS&I's GOV.UK record, voice agents in regulated service lines contain 21% to 42% of calls. That is a good result. What matters more is what happens to the rest, and to the callers who ring back.

5 min read

Voice AI

Your voice agent speaks for you. Who signed off what it says?

Disclosure, vulnerable callers, a route to a person, recording and payments: what the rules expect of an AI voice agent in a regulated firm, and a one-page sign-off sheet to complete before go-live.

6 min read

AI Cost

Your 2027 AI budget will be wrong. Here's how to make it wrong by less.

Gartner has published three different 2026 AI spend forecasts this year. Here's how to set a 2027 AI budget your finance team can defend.

5 min read

AI Governance

Brussels moved the deadline, not the risk

The EU delayed its high-risk AI rules to December 2027. The parts that didn't move already apply, and on 2 December 2026 more of them start to bite.

4 min read

AI Accuracy

Everyone counts what AI makes up. Almost nobody counts what it leaves out.

In one study of clinical notes, AI left things out more often than it made things up. Why omissions need their own number, and how to count them.

4 min read

AI Automation

Field story: the logistics business that stopped building bots one at a time

More than 220 automations, each built from scratch. Here's what changed when the business agreed the parts before building any more machines.

3 min read

AI Cost

Seats or tokens: are your AI licences paying for themselves?

Most organisations now pay for AI twice: per seat for the assistants their people use, and per token for the systems their developers build. Nobody compares the two, so nobody knows which half is the expensive one.

7 min read

AI Cost

What actually drives an AI bill: the levers behind one number

An AI invoice arrives as a single figure, but it is the product of half a dozen separate decisions. Model choice, output length, hidden reasoning, caching and timing can each move the same workload's cost several times over.

8 min read

AI Accuracy

What the AI hallucination cases mean for any firm that signs AI-drafted work

Courts and tribunals on both sides of the Atlantic have now ruled on AI-generated errors. The pattern is consistent: the tool is never the defendant. Whoever put their name to the output answers for it.

7 min read

Conversational AI

What drives the cost of integrating voice AI with a contact centre

The licence is rarely the expensive part. Integration scope, intent count, language coverage and testing depth are what move the number — and each one is a decision you can make differently.

9 min read

Agentic AI

When a rules-based workflow is enough, and when an AI agent adds value

Not every workflow needs an agent. Deterministic automation is cheaper to build, cheaper to run and easier to assure — here is how to tell which one you are looking at, before you pay for the wrong one.

8 min read

AI Strategy

The Cost of Asking: why AI bills rise as prices fall

Token prices fell by roughly two thirds in a year while enterprise AI budgets grew about sixfold. The gap is volume, and the cause is structural: a language model has no index into a document, so every question pays to read everything.

6 min read

Conversational AI

What is conversational AI and voice automation, and where does it deliver value?

Conversational AI and voice automation use natural language to handle interactions — answering questions, routing requests and triggering actions — while connecting to the systems behind them. The value comes when conversations lead to real operational outcomes.

7 min read

AI Orchestration

What is AI orchestration, and why does it matter for enterprise AI?

AI orchestration is the layer that connects AI models, data, systems, workflows and people so automation works reliably and under control. It is what turns isolated AI tools into operational systems.

7 min read

Data Readiness

What makes business data AI-ready?

An explanation of the data foundations needed for reliable automation, AI grounding and governed decision-making.

6 min read

AI Strategy

Why AI projects stall at pilot stage

A look at why enterprise AI initiatives lose momentum and what needs to be in place before they can scale.

6 min read

Agentic AI

What is agentic AI, and why should enterprises be paying attention?

A practical introduction to agentic AI, orchestration and the move from AI experimentation to AI operation.

7 min read

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