New Delhi:Most privacy incidents will arise from AI generated inferences about individuals by 2029, rather than from direct exposure of personally identifiable information (PII), a report said on Friday.

The report from Gartner, Inc said advances in generative AI and machine learning enable attackers to extract sensitive attributes such as health conditions or behavioural patterns from seemingly innocuous, anonymised or aggregated data. As organisations reduce the amount of personal data they store due to regulatory and cost pressures, threat actors’ access to AI now lets them perform inference-based attacks.

“There is a fundamental shift underway from data exposure to insight exposure,” said Bart Willemsen, VP Analyst at Gartner. “Organisations have historically focused on protecting raw personal data, but AI can now reconstruct deeply personal insights without ever breaching traditional data controls. Privacy risks are increasingly emerging from what AI algorithms infer about individuals rather than what data is directly exposed,” he added.