2026: Privacy, AI, And The New Rules Of Trust
OneTrust, Wednesday, February 4th, 2026
2026 will challenge privacy leaders to govern AI responsibly while meeting accelerating business, regulatory, and operational demands.
In 2025, artificial intelligence began reshaping the foundations of business. End-user adoption accelerated across industries, many use cases moved from experimentation to production, and expectations expanded rapidly (and sometimes unreasonably) for efficiency and business impact. Most importantly, AI drove a rethink across every part of the enterprise, from product development to customer engagement.
Privacy programs felt the impact of these shifts almost immediately. AI introduced new questions around data use, accountability, and transparency in each and every project that touched personal data. Small privacy teams and fragmented tooling struggled to absorb this additional volume and complexity of projects, driving backlogs and inconsistent decision-making.