AI governance is shifting from identity to intent. If CMOs are expected to safeguard brand trust in this new era, they must be structurally empowered to lead it.
For a long time, identity has been the organizing principle of digital governance. We authenticated users, assigned roles, and aligned permissions to organizational charts. It made sense in a world where humans were the primary actors inside our systems. If you knew who someone was and what role they held, you could determine what they were allowed to do.
That world is changing…
AI agents do not log in and log out, they don’t wait for instructions…. they act continuously, they consume data autonomously, they make decisions at speed, they learn, they scale, and they operate without the natural pauses and judgment calls that humans bring to the table. In that environment, identity alone is no longer enough.
What matters now is intent…
Why is an agent acting? For how long? With what data? Under what constraints? On whose behalf? Governance in the AI era is no longer about who something is… it’s about what it is doing and why it is doing it. That shift has profound implications for leadership, particularly for the CMO. Today’s CMO sits at the intersection of customer experience, brand integrity, privacy, sustainability, and increasingly, AI-driven engagement. If AI agents are shaping how customers experience a brand, across marketing, service, personalization, and commerce, then governing intent is not simply a technical challenge. It is a BRAND CHALLENGE and a TRUST CHALLENGE.
Here is where the tension lives…
Many organizations are now suggesting that marketing leaders help define the new governance language for AI. Conceptually, that makes sense… BRAND is about promise, perception, and reputation. BUT STRUCTURALLY, most CMOs do not have authority across the functions required to fully govern AI intent. PR and corporate communications often report elsewhere. Internal communications are separated, HR owns employee voice and culture, Legal owns compliance, Technology owns infrastructure, Data teams own AI architecture.
Yet brand trust touches all of it…
For a long time, I have believed that the CMO role should extend beyond traditional marketing. Brand is not just advertising… it’s external voice and internal culture, it’s what you say and what you do, it’s how employees behave and how customers feel, it’s reputation earned over time. When we fragment stewardship of those elements across silos, we weaken alignment. When we then layer autonomous systems on top of that fragmentation, we increase risk.
At its core, this is about relationships. Technology may move at scale, but trust still compounds one interaction at a time. AI can accelerate experience, but it cannot replace accountability. And accountability is what sustains relationships over the long term. Tools can scale interactions… only leadership can sustain trust.
Governance without authority is just theory…
AI is not creating this structural misalignment. It is exposing it. We built the Intent Economy by allowing technology to act at scale. Now we must decide whether we will empower leaders to govern that scale responsibly… or continue pretending alignment exists where it does not.
The CMO should play a central role in this moment. Not as a symbolic figurehead of “BRAND,” but as a true steward of TRUST across customer experience, communications, culture, and AI-driven interaction. If intent is the new currency, trust remains the foundation… and trust cannot be governed by committee or managed through fragmented authority.
This is not simply about AI governance… it’s about leadership alignment, it’s about recognizing that brand, reputation, culture, and accountability are no longer parallel conversations. They are the same conversation. If we expect CMOs to safeguard intent at scale, then we must give them the mandate, AND THE POWER, to do so.
We built the Intent Economy… Now the CMO needs the power to govern it.