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February 10, 2025 Opinion & Commentary

Chief information, marketing officers are crucial to powering ethical AI, customer engagement

By Jim Merrifield

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is reshaping the corporate landscape, offering unparalleled opportunities to enhance customer experiences and streamline operations.

Jim Merrifield

At the intersection of this digital transformation lie two key executives — the chief information (CIO) and chief marketing (CMO) officers. This dynamic duo, when aligned, can drive ethical AI adoption, ensure compliance and foster personalized customer engagement powered by innovation and responsibility.

Understanding ethical AI

Ethical AI isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a guiding principle that ensures AI solutions respect user privacy, avoid bias and operate transparently.

To create meaningful customer experiences while addressing the societal concerns surrounding AI, CIOs and CMOs must collaborate to design AI applications that are innovative and responsible.

CMOs focus on delivering dynamic, real-time and personalized interactions to meet rising customer expectations. However, achieving this requires vast amounts of personal data, potentially risking violations of privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation.

Enter the CIO, who ensures the technical infrastructure adheres to these laws, while safeguarding the organization’s reputation.

Together, the CIO and CMO can delicately balance between leveraging AI for customer engagement and adhering to responsible AI practices.

Data governance

Data governance is the backbone of ethical AI and compelling customer engagement. CMOs rely on customer data to craft hyper-personalized campaigns, while CIOs are charged with maintaining that data’s security, accuracy and ethical usage.

Without proper governance, organizations risk breaches, regulatory fines, and, perhaps most damaging, a loss of trust among consumers.

Collaboration between CIOs and CMOs is necessary to establish clear data management protocols; this includes ensuring that all collected data is anonymized as needed, securely stored, and utilized in compliance with emerging AI content-labeling regulations.

Robust technology infrastructure

For AI to deliver on its promise of customer engagement, organizations require scalable, secure and agile technology infrastructure.

A close alignment between CIOs and CMOs ensures that marketing campaigns are supported by IT systems capable of handling diverse AI workloads.

Platforms driven by machine learning and big data analytics allow marketing teams to create real-time, omnichannel campaigns.

Meanwhile, CIOs ensure these platforms integrate seamlessly into the organization’s technology stack without sacrificing security or performance.

Cybersecurity challenges

Customer engagement strategies powered by AI rely heavily on consumer trust, but cybersecurity threats lurk around every corner.

According to Palo Alto Networks’ predictions, customer data is central to modern marketing initiatives. However, without an early alignment between CIOs and CMOs, the organization is exposed to risks like data breaches, compliance violations and AI-related controversies.

A proactive collaboration between CIOs and CMOs ensures that potential vulnerabilities are identified and mitigated before they evolve into full-blown crises.

Measures such as end-to-end data encryption, regular cybersecurity audits, and robust AI content-labeling policies can protect the organization’s digital assets and reputation.

There are several examples of successful CIO-CMO collaborations.

One of the world’s largest retail chains, for instance, successfully transformed its customer experience. The CIO rolled out a scalable AI-driven recommendation engine, while the CMO used this tool to craft personalized shopping experiences.

The result? A 35% increase in customer retention within a year, and significant growth in lifetime customer value.

In another example, a financial services firm adopted an AI-powered chatbot to enhance its customer service. The CIO ensured compliance with strict financial regulations, while the CMO leveraged customer insights to refine the chatbot’s conversational design.

Together, they created a seamless, trustworthy digital service channel that improved customer satisfaction scores by 28%.

Future trends

The evolving landscape of AI, compliance and customer engagement is reshaping the roles of CIOs and CMOs.

Here are a few trends to watch in the coming years:

  • AI transparency: Regulations will increasingly require companies to disclose how AI models were trained and how customer data is used. Alignment between CIOs and CMOs will be vital in meeting these demands without derailing marketing campaigns.
  • Hyper-personalization: Advances in machine learning will allow marketers to offer even more granular personalization, but this will require sophisticated data-centric systems designed by CIOs.
  • AI content labeling: From machine-generated text to synthetic media, organizations must adopt clear labeling practices to distinguish between AI-driven and human-generated content.

Jim Merrifield is the director of information governance and business intake at law firm Robinson+Cole.

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