One-fifth of companies that have embraced AI do so without imposing guidelines or restrictions on employees using it. When companies do have rules for AI use, 60 percent of staff try to circumvent such restrictions.
That’s according to the 2024 API Impact report from Kong, provider of API management solutions. The report also says that AI investments fuel innovation. 83 percent of developers said their organization has used AI to create new products or services in the past year. Also, 92 percent of them see AI as a strategic priority.
As AI increasingly becomes a ‘normal’ part of business strategies, the report predicts that the global economic impact of APIs will skyrocket to 17.3 trillion dollars by 2030. It also promises a 170 percent increase in the value of specifically those APIs that unlock the potential of AI.
According to Kong, AI and APIs are interrelated, as the latter quite often serve as the ‘eyes, ears, and hands’ of AI. At the same time, API management tools can keep the use of such AI secure and compliant. This is not always a given, however, given users’ tendency to flout their company’s imposed restrictions on the use of AI.
Opportunities for growth, but also for abuse
This is a danger because, despite the positive outlook, the danger of abuse also lurks. The economic value of AI APIs promises to skyrocket by 2030, but so does the number of API attacks. Kong predicts these will increase by 548 percent from today. This is partly due to companies’ rapid and sometimes ill-considered adoption of AI applications. They don’t always think carefully about how they integrate them into their business processes, put guardrails on them, and manage them centrally.
While companies frequently deploy models like ChatGPT, Azure AI, and Google Gemini, successful integration with robust APIs is not a given. According to those surveyed, the most important part of API management in the next one to two years will be successful integration with AI models. A third of organizations cite the challenge of not having such management tools (now) or a standard API interface to access LLMs. It’s a good thing, then, that this is exactly what Kong provides.
Kong’s survey was conducted among 747 IT professionals and supervisors worldwide, although the majority are from the U.S. The report can be accessed here.
Read more: API security is starting to get the attention it deserves from organizations