A pair of reports show that artificial intelligence (AI) use and adoption is growing in broadband and other industries.
Protiviti reports that 68% of organizations will have integrated autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents into their core operations by 2026. The company’s report says nearly one in four (23%) respondents reported in August 2025 that they were within six months of integrating AI agents that can operate semi-autonomously or with defined guardrails under human supervision.
Additionally, the report found that more than half of the studied organizations are actively planning to implement agentic AI in the next year, with only about 5% targeting a three- to five-year horizon.
The Protiviti report, “From Automation to Autonomy: The Capabilities and Complexities of AI Agents,” added: “TMT (technology, media and telecom) leads among the industry groups supporting full automation. The group’s innovation-driven and infrastructure-ready sectors are most eager to automate complex, multistep tasks with minimal human intervention.”
Protiviti’s findings are in line with those in a second report — “IDC Data and AI Impact Report: The Trust Imperative,” commissioned by SAS — which said that 40% of companies are investing to make AI systems trustworthy through governance, explainability.
SAS reports that generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) was viewed as 200% more trustworthy than traditional AI (e.g., machine learning), even though traditional AI is more established and reliable.
The reports’ findings align with current AI realities. AT&T is testing an agentic AI-powered digital receptionist that the company says has the potential to significantly reduce the headaches caused by phone spam and fraud.
AT&T said that the system relies on multiple large language models (LLMs) and its long history dealing with fraud and other malicious types of calls. The company reports that its AI receptionist is built into the network and does not rely on the user’s phone or use its resources.
