American Honda established its generative AI strategy in 2023, focusing on immediate risk response, internal capability building, employee training, and long-term planning. As the company advances toward broader goals, management has further strengthened its focus on responsible AI and the data foundation behind it.

"We are committed to improving the speed and quality of decision-making at all levels of the organization," said Bob Brizendine, Senior Vice President of IT at American Honda and Deputy Head of Digital Operations for Honda Motor's Corporate Administration. "We install brakes in our cars to drive more safely and quickly; data governance and AI governance are essentially the same."

As companies increase their investment in generative AI,adequate governancebecomes key to achieving AI ambitions. A lack of framework can lead to a range of obstacles, fromrising costs、poor performance, toproject delaysandbiased outcomes。

However, strengthening governance is not a one-time effort. Brizendine told CIO Dive that pursuing what the industry calls"AI-ready data"is a "mythical" endeavor.

"I do use the word 'myth' because I cannot precisely measure when data is ready for AI or for what kind of decision," Brizendine said. "It's a difficult task. Ultimately, it depends on the specific use case, the risk of the decision, and the importance of that decision."

American Honda is striving to take control of data and AI governance by establishing a Responsible AI Committee, building a unified data platform, and fostering digital literacy.

The committee, composed of representatives from various business units, continuously monitors model drift, privacy compliance obligations, and how AI-generated outputs are used. The committee advises teams on expectations for AI use and when to adopt which models. Brizendine said that around mid-year, the group will evaluate execution and make adjustments as necessary.

To support the committee's work and the overall strategy, American Honda employees are participating in digital literacy training. The automaker partnered with Gallup, a research and consulting firm, to create a digital literacy metric to assess team levels.

"If we understand the digital literacy level of our teams, we can tailor educational programs to their level—whether it's executives who need to learn how to leverage these capabilities to drive innovation, or regular employees," Brizendine said.

Strengthening the data engine

In addition to governance initiatives, American Honda has in recent yearsenhanced data ownershipand is committed to popularizing AI and data tools across the organization.

Enterprise AI efforts have amplified the importance of data in most organizations. According to a survey released Wednesday by Collibra and Harris Poll,more than four-fifths of technology decision-makerssaid that data ownership has shifted over the past year as adoption plans expand.

American Honda is anearly adopter of Microsoft Copilotand rolled it out broadly in 2023. Since then, the company has explored AI tools for multiple business units and tasks. The automaker is also working to build a unified data platform and accelerate data maturity to support its generative AI initiatives.

"This is where all the elements come together," Brizendine said. "We are investing heavily in building a unified platform to integrate strategic data elements: integrating various data to ensure seamless data flow. We proceed in order of data domain priority."

As the organization continues to integrate unstructured data (such as owner's manuals) and improve the quality of structured data, the company is also identifying areas for improvement.

"When we talk about quality or defect information in manufacturing, without a common language, it's difficult to communicate and review across factory boundaries," Brizendine cited as an example of a use case not yet fully ready.

Arun Yarlagadda, Deputy Director of Global Services and Data Platforms at American Honda and Chief Data Officer for North America, told CIO Dive that abandoning a potentially valuable use case is uncommon; more often, it is placed on a "deferred" list.

"If we use factory photos to plan the next best action, but the photo quality is poor, we will work to improve that data source," Yarlagadda said. "We don't just give up, but we have to postpone related activities."

Yarlagadda said that in the long run, the right talent, observability, and monitoring capabilities will continue to be critical to its success.

For organizations where data and AI governance is on track, technology leaders need to remain vigilant and look to the future.

"Data and AI are the twin engines driving our digital transformation," Brizendine said. "Keeping up with the pulse of this ever-changing world is very difficult, but we are increasing our investment in advanced technology planning and proof of concepts to be prepared."