In recent months, a new addition to the S&P officer class emerged: the chief AI Officer. This position is defined not by the control of key budgets, or the size of the team, but rather their expertise in everything generative, agentic, and automation.
In just the last year, brands such as General Motors, Mastercard, and ZocDoc, along with agency holding companies Stagwell and subsidiaries Golin, and independent shops like Luckie & Co., and Horizon Media, have all appointed chief AI officers. Adtech firms like Zefr, S&P, and Accenture are also on board with the trend. Zefr hired its CAIO in February of 2024.
These appointments are being made as companies move beyond experimenting AI and look for ways to realize the business efficiency they hope it will deliver. It’s now a table stakes. They are finding that they need a strong personality to drive these changes.
The executives who have been hired to fill these roles range from veterans with a deep understanding of machine learning, the pre-generative AI era, and media chiefs or agency founders who were brought on board when their businesses had been acquired by a holding. Daniel Hulme is WPP’s AI Chief and co-founder Satalia. He is an example of this latter group.
Hulme, WPP’s CAIO said that his role encompasses several key areas – making “right AI bets”reinventing operational processes and overseeing AI ethics. He also collaborates with the C-Suite to make AI-related decisions. He is also responsible for tracking emerging AI trends and innovations from the corporate and academic sectors. “If I am surprised by something, then I have not done my job properly,” said he.
In addition, he oversees a research group within the company called Conscium. It was founded last year and explores areas such as AI consciousness, ethics, and experimental areas, like “neuromorphic computing” – computing designs that are inspired by how the brain functions. Hulme explained that his job was to “understand what are the best algorithms to solve the problems.” “Are algorithms going enable us to differentiate ourselves or will they be circumvented in the future by other algorithms?” My role includes placing the right bets for the short, medium and long term.
Wesley ter Haar is another newly appointed CAIO. He is the co-founder of Monks. He was appointed to the role in February, alongside his role as Chief Revenue Officer. S4 Capital, which owns the agency, also created a chatbot that is based on Wesley ter Haar to promote the move and recruit AI talent.
In every industry, there will be a certain percentage of companies who figure out [AI] and a large number of companies who don’t,” ter Haar stated. “I think the economic benefits of figuring it out creates a huge competitive gap.”
CAIOs combine a variety of skills. They are often asked to be frontmen for clients, tech visionaries who guide an organization into the next decade, and gamblers who decide which tech developer or LLM supplier has the best tech.
Dan Priest, PwC’s CAIO for the U.S., said in an email that a CAIO must balance innovation and accountability in order to help the organization scale AI effectively.
They’re also responsible for navigating internal tensions that arise when introducing AI to front-line staff who may be afraid of automation. Priest, a former Toyota chief information officer, said that collaboration is essential, whether it’s with business leaders, technical teams, or external partners.
“Having an ‘Head AI’ shows clients that agencies are committed in meeting client demand for data driven solutions,” Gartner Analyst Nicole Greene stated in an email.
Where do they fit? Some of them are in charge of teams, while others have a variety roles within their organization. Priest, for instance, works directly with PwC’s chief commercial officer. “My work is focused on supporting and advancing clients’ AI strategies,” he stated.
CAIOs can report directly to CEOs in some cases. For example, at Stagwell, an agency holding company, CAIOs are often the CAOs. John Kahan is a veteran AI from Microsoft and IBM who was hired by Stagwell this month. He will report directly to Mark Penn, the company’s boss. He told Digiday the role was designed to integrate into Stagwell’s central Marketing Cloud division, and across its entire portfolio. However, it will not come with its own departments. “I don’t have to hire a large team to manage this environment,” he stated.
AT&T’s CAIO Andy Markus – formerly a WarnerMedia and Turner executive – combines his role with that of chief data officers and heads a 950-strong team, under the guidance and direction of the firm’s CEO Jeremy Legg. “We empower and enable business units within AT&T with a Data-first mindset to reimagine their work,” he wrote in an email.
The CAIOs’ exposure to their customers is a key difference. Some, such as Kahan and Markus occupy positions that are internal facing, with a mandate to roll out AI technologies across their organization. Some, like PwC Priest, are more focused on the outside.
Lately, our clients have shown a lot of interest in AI agents. “These kinds of capabilities are exciting but they also bring up questions about integration, oversight, trust, and so on,” he said.
Smaller agencies have also added CAIOs and similar roles in recent months. Tim Rich, for example, took on the role as head of AI at Horizon Media in May. Luckie & Co. also named Mark Unrein CAIO in the fall of last year. Unrein, who was previously the agency’s Svp of Operations, took on the new role last year.
His time is now split between guiding the agency’s AI adoption and educating clients on AI. Unrein said, “We call ourselves informed navigators for challenging brands.” Since Unrein’s new brief, the agency began exploring custom integrations with LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT and visual tools such as TypeFace and Adobe Firefly.
It’s not the first time that execs have created new job titles in order to catch the latest tech wave – chief metaverse officer hasn’t aged well. But the variety of companies who are adding CAIOs indicates a tectonic change AI poses for C-Suites beyond a passing trend.
Summed up Priest: “It’s not about chasing hype; it’s about long-term impact.”
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