Brian Pugh, CTO at Lucid Software, believes that AI will be even more deeply integrated into business systems in 2026 – from financial reporting to team and customer interactions. This will also greatly increase the need for AI audit trails: detailed records of what data AI used, what steps it took, what suggestions or decisions it influenced, and who ultimately confirmed the choices. These trails will become crucial for compliance, ethical accountability, and ensuring business integrity.
According to Pugh, there will be a clear trend toward transparent AI workflows, and companies will increasingly see that an error in a prediction can be traced back to a specific step in the AI workflow. For example, an audit trail can show that a prediction became unrealistic because a dataset was incomplete, an AI model misinterpreted something, or an employee made an adjustment. By recording what AI does when generating content or making decisions, the workflow becomes transparent and traceable.
Pugh predicts that organizations that fail to record these insights will face increasingly greater risks. A recent example is a government report that, due to a lack of careful checking and substantiated sources, contained major errors and even references to non-existent documentation. The consulting firm involved was forced to completely revise the report, resulting in considerable reputational damage and delays. Without audit trails, it becomes difficult to justify decisions, both internally and to external parties. Pugh is convinced that companies that invest in robust, traceable AI workflows in 2026 will be better able to combine innovation with responsible decision-making.
This article was submitted by Lucid Software.