Former Boots UK executive Rich Corbridge discusses the top five trends in AI for CIOs during 2026

The breakneck pace of AI advances in today’s enterprise means that CIOs face a rapidly shifting landscape, where emerging AI technologies, new regulatory concerns and pressures, and enterprise demands converge.

As artificial intelligence innovation accelerates into 2026, leading UK CIO and BCS Fellow, Richard Corbridge outlines the top five AI trends that forward looking CIOs need to prepare for in 2026. 

He comments: “Increasingly autonomous enterprise AI applications and systems will continue to develop over the coming year, going beyond task automation to make decisions, take more initiative, and adapt dynamically.”

“Faster multimodal AI that can process and integrate diverse types of data - including text, images, video, audio, sensor inputs and more - into unified insights will offer enterprises huge benefits in 2026, including far richer customer interactions, highly intuitive user experiences and more advanced decision support. AI will bring impact and change to every type of business the world over, those that are not on the journey are going to see their dominance and, in some cases, even their existence threatened.”

“AI that acts with growing independence will present CIOs with numerous data governance, digital security, and ethical challenges. And faster multimodal AI tech will present many new challenges around scalability, interoperability with legacy technologies and systems, and alignment with compliance requirements. The need for CIOs to be business change focused and to offer ways to always have a human focus to the problems they are trying to solve will be at the forefront.”  

Ultimately CIOs must prioritise responsible AI adoption, prioritising ethical, easily explainable, and regulated AI systems to ensure trust, compliance and sustainable business value.

They will need to be able to identify the best new vertical and domain specific AI copilots that will be increasingly tailored to specific industry workflows, regulations, and knowledge. And, of course, be quick to adopt new AI powered cybersecurity technologies that transform threat detection, response, and prevention by analysing huge amounts of data in real-time.  

Business’ that in 1998 were concentrating on users of their services moved to customers in the noughties and as the AI revolution continues still further in 2025, they will focus on the customer as a partner.  

#1 Increasingly autonomous AI  

Corbridge continuea: “Increasingly autonomous or ‘agentic’ AI systems will offer CIOs the ability to plan, execute, and adapt in real-time - from managing unforeseen disruptions in supply chains, optimising IT infrastructure, handling financial transactions, and much more. The real promise of autonomous AI is that it can offer almost unmatched scalability - enabling enterprises to run continuous operations with fewer human bottlenecks.”  

“However, the challenge with agentic AI systems will be one of governance. Put simply, how does (or even should) a CIO ensure accountability for an AI agent that is taking independent action with no human input or direction?”

“To harness its power responsibly, CIOs will need to align agentic AI with business values, integrate human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and establish “agent ops” teams, tasked with monitoring AI behaviours, setting guardrails, and intervening when necessary.” At every implementation the decision as to whether the human is in the loop, on the loop or outside of the loop will need to be taken, in some cases this decision will be different for each part of a business process or engagement. CIOs are going to make closer friends of the Chief People Officer than ever before.”  

#2 Multimodal AI becomes mainstream 

Faster multimodal AI models capable of processing text, images, audio, video, and code simultaneously are set to reshapehow enterprises interact with technology in 2026.

The possibilities and business benefits of multimodal AI seem almost endless: engineers will be able to debug code faster through spoken queries; marketers will be able to generate more impactful campaigns combining images, video, and text faster than ever before; and in healthcare, medical teams will analyse scans and reports within one unified interface.” 

“Ultimately, multimodal AI will unlock incredible new opportunities for richer customer engagement and operational efficiency. Enterprises that master multimodal AI will deliver experiences that feel less like interacting with machines and more like collaborating with human colleagues. For CIOs the challenge will be one of integration and interoperability with legacy enterprise systems, bringing together data previously stored in silos, or in incompatible formats,” says Corbridge. 

#3 Ethical, explainable and regulated AI 

New and developing AI regulations in 2026, such as the EU AI Act and emerging US state level frameworks will mean that ethical AI will shift from being best practice to a basic compliance requirement. Transparency is key here, and explainability - understanding how AI arrives at a decision - will be essential in heavily regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, and public services.

Many CIOs have placed explainability at the core of their AI framework with the test to be able to tell ‘anyone’ how it works rather than simply knowing yourself as the CIO becoming the normal.  

Corbridge adds: “CIOs must be prepared to integrate bias detection tools, audit AI models regularly, and ensuremaximum transparency across AI supply chains. Those that fail to implement responsible AI governance risk facing heavy fines, irreparable reputational damage, and the loss of trust amongst customers.”

“Ultimately, those CIOs who can guarantee fairness, transparency, and accountability in their AI solutions will win trust from clients and regulators alike. Being able to model how the AI is reacting and keep on top of this always is fast becoming a need of every business that is part of the AI revolution.”  

#4 Vertical, domain specific AI and copilots 

“In 2026, we will see a shift from generic AI solutions towards far more specialised, domain-specific models tailored to the needs of industries. So, for example, we will see legal research copilots that draft detailed and nuanced case summaries;manufacturing copilots that can accurately predict machine breakdowns; and financial copilots that will rapidly and accurately detect fraud.”

“Every week and month we are seeing new innovations that shift the dial in how AI is deployed, Harvey in legal and contracting, Genie3 in world modelling and testing and Nano Banana in image generation, creationand interaction.  

“Vertical AI will offer CIOs far superior ROI through aligning with the specific data, regulations, and workflows of a given industry. The challenge here will be twofold: firstly it will be in training and fine-tuning these systems, as they will require access to high quality proprietary datasets - raising privacy and integration concerns; and secondly, embedding AI copilots effectively will require very careful change management, as human employees must trust and adopt these tools, instead of viewing them as potentially disruptive threats to their jobs,” adds Corbridge. 

#5 AI powered cybersecurity and risk management 

Finally, CIOs are going to need to be far more aware of the digital threats posed by the increasing adoption of generative AI across the enterprise in 2026.

Bad actors will continue to find new ways of exploiting AI for sophisticated phishing attacks, to generate polymorphic malware, and evade detection systems. This is why new AI-powered cybersecurity platforms will be indispensable over the coming year. 

CIOs will need to oversee the transition from reactive cyber defence systems to a far more proactive security posture, adopting new systems that will use machine learning to detect anomalies in real time, forecast vulnerabilities, and orchestrate automated incident responses.

The real challenge here will be investing in the best human talent, and in upskilling cybersecurity teams to enable them to manage and interpret AI driven security insights effectively.  

“As 2026 approaches, CIOs face a pivotal moment. The five AI trends outlined above - autonomous agents, multimodal systems, ethical governance, industry specific copilots, and AI-powered cybersecurity – are set to redefine how enterprises operate.”

“And they are going to demand foresight, investment, and careful governance. To navigate and capture the competitive advantages they present, CIOs need to prepare for these changes: upgrading infrastructure, establishinggovernance frameworks, and cultivating cross-disciplinary expertise.

Perhaps most important though for us as CIOs is the business engagement in what is a complex arena that needs to be achieved to ensure benefits are released but also to harness the skills levelling that AI in this consumerised manner has brought to the workforce in any business,” concludes Corbridge.