Every HR leader I talk to right now is asking some version of the same question: “Who actually owns AI at my company?”
For a while the answer felt obvious. HR owns the workforce, AI touches the workforce, so HR owns AI. That assumption is already out of date (I know, AI is moving that fast).
Here's what's actually happening. Two separate moves are underway, and most people are conflating them.
Move one: A new seat gets created, and HR isn't automatically in it
“Chief AI Officer” has become the fastest-growing title in the C-suite. IBM's 2026 CEO study found 76% of surveyed organizations now have one, up from 26% the year before. Named appointments include JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Siemens, SAP, Pfizer, GE HealthCare, HSBC, Lloyds, UnitedHealth Group, American Express, Lowe's, Target, CVS Health, and Deloitte, where Joe Atkinson runs the function globally.
The part that should get HR's attention: one of the CAIO's standard responsibility buckets is workforce readiness, preparing people to work alongside AI. That's a direct lift from HR's traditional territory. And the reporting lines confirm where the authority is landing: roughly 60% of CAIOs report to the CEO, 25% to the CTO, 15% to the COO. CHRO doesn't show up in that breakdown at all.
Fortune's reporting on this puts it plainly: the CHRO seat at the table isn't disappearing, but the authority attached to it is migrating elsewhere, toward finance and operations, which speak the language of margins and workforce economics rather than culture and development.
Move two: HR rebrands itself before someone else claims the mandate
This is the more direct answer to what people are hearing about "new titles taking over HR."
Jacqui Canney at ServiceNow became Chief People and AI Enablement Officer in January. Tracey Franklin at Moderna became Chief People and Digital Technology Officer, merging HR and technology under one seat. And a title has started circulating at HR conferences that hasn't fully landed yet: Chief Work Officer, floated by Databricks' CPO Amy Reichanadter among others, built on the premise that the job is no longer managing people, it's managing work, regardless of whether a human or an agent does it.
And these aren't cosmetic changes, they're more pre-emptive. HR leaders who take this move are betting that expanding the title now is cheaper than losing the mandate later.
The honest read
Neither move has won. Industry advisors tracking this, including Randy Bean and Gartner's Jonathan Tabah, describe the CAIO role as still "transitional". It could become permanent and absorb workforce strategy for good. Or it could get folded back into the CTO, COO, or CHRO portfolio once the AI transformation matures and the novelty of a standalone title wears off. Right now, it’s too early to say, but the pieces are already moving on the chess board.
If you're an HR leader, are you waiting to see how this resolves or are you attempting to get in front of it? Bigger question - do you truly want to own it? I’ve had confidential conversations with CPOs who have secretly confided in me that they honestly don’t want to own AI but they are happy to support it. What do you think?