Most RIA AI-governance conversations start with the wrong question: “should we adopt AI?” The honest starting point is that adoption already happened, and you weren’t in the room. Microsoft built Copilot into the 365 ecosystem. Zoom added AI Companion. Your CRM, your note-taker, your portfolio commentary tool, your phone system’s transcription — each shipped AI features in the last two years. Whether a given feature is enabled, bundled, tenant-configurable, or one admin-click away depends on your licensing and settings — which is precisely the problem, because at most firms nobody has checked. Each feature changes where client information travels and what it may train.
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