AI Adoption in the Evolution of Board Portals

AI in the Board Portal Space

The board portal market is evolving into an indispensable digital solution for corporate governance, communication, and decision-making.

This expansion was previously driven in the post-COVID era by the lessons learned from our hasty shift to remote and hybrid work models. COVID and its consequences spurred substantial investment in board systems fundamentally reshaping how boards now operate. It is estimated that 92% of public companies will be utilizing a board portal in 2023 compared to just 18% in 2019.

Since 2024, there is been increasing use of AI to assist with tasks amenable to AI methods. Board portal software has also been evolving in step with this new AI trend.

While AI features currently available in board meeting software is in its formative stages, more and more board portal vendors are currently shipping these kinds of features. The primary focus of these AI implementations center on:

• Speech to text transcription
• Minute-taking improvements
• Document summarization
• Agenda drafting

The leading vendors or board meeting software each offers a distinct suite of AI-powered tools with varied approaches to integrating intelligent automation into their platforms.

It is important to recognize that while AI holds substantial promise for future advancements in corporate governance, the current practical application of these features is often foundational.

Some advanced AI functionalities are still under development or are explicitly marketed as "coming soon," and certain existing features may require specific user actions or prerequisites, such as opt-in activation or reliance on video transcriptions, to function effectively.

The AI Imperative

The board portal market is projected to grow significantly in the next five to ten years. The growth of the market is expected to have a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.6% from 2025 to 2033. The increasing integration of AI and ML is identified as a key market highlight and a significant opportunity for board portal vendors.

This suggests that AI is a strategic differentiator that vendors are leveraging to capture market share and sustain this robust growth. From a marketing standpoint, the inclusion of AI features is becoming a crucial value proposition to attract new clients and retain existing ones in a competitive landscape.

AI in Board Portals – Still a Long Way to Go

Despite considerable marketing noise and smoke surrounding AI in board portals, the practical application and maturity of these features are still a way off.

Board portal developers are coding furiously as they attempt to introduce functionalities that, leverage the developing capabilities of the AI models provided by Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini and others.

There are a number of difficulties (see short list below):

• The transfer of privileged corporate information contained in board packets and minutes into a LLM (Large Language Model) somewhere in the cloud, involves considerable corporate risk
• AI integration is at this stage, far from seamless, making it difficult to integrate into daily workflows. Also many features are promised and as yet only available as presentation ware.
• Requirements for users to "opt-in" to AI tools also pose a barrier to adoption

The AI Costs Issue

A major problem board portal vendors face is the costs related to the use of large LLMs. At the moment these costs are more than a little murky. Sure you can use the estimator tools that companies like Microsoft and Google provide, but the figures provided are estimates based on guesses of usage and token volume estimates. It can be just as easy to underestimate costs as it is to overestimate them.

This leaves vendors with a painful decision: To charge for AI or not. Do you go with no-charge and a wait-and-see attitude or do you add an AI tier to your pricing? This is a question that does not have an easy answer.

AI in Board Portals: The Risks

While AI is presented as a powerful tool for enhanced risk management and compliance, it has some inherent risks of its own:

• Data privacy vulnerabilities
• Algorithmic bias
• Regulatory compliance complexity

These risks lead to the inescapable fact that that AI itself introduces new governance and operational risk that organizations have to proactively address. This creates a paradoxical demand for board portals: they must leverage AI for efficiency gains and simultaneously provide robust tools and frameworks for governing the AI itself, ensuring its responsible and ethical deployment.

If AI is used to manage risk, but also creates new risks, then a governance platform integrating AI must address both aspects.

For board portals, this means AI features are not just about productivity; they are increasingly about enabling "responsible AI" adoption within the enterprise.

This dual role, results in AI acting as both an enabler and a governor of risk.

Take-Away

AI vendors have to integrate AI into their offerings, not just for competitive advantage, but as a critical strategy to ensure their platforms remain relevant and indispensable in an evolving landscape increasingly dominated by remote and hybrid work models.