HubSpot’s AI chief highlights the importance of transparency

The news: Exclusive EMARKETER conversations with HubSpot’s head of AI Nicholas Holland and HubSpot customer John Mothershead, director of member success for Youth on Course, revealed how HubSpot is succeeding with AI innovation.

• Using HubSpot’s Breeze AI—which recently introduced four AI agents to aid sales and marketing teams—Youth on Course was able to accurately respond to complex, region-specific questions, saving the company years of training, according to Mothershead. The Customer Agent handled 90% of Youth on Course’s inquiries without human intervention, allowing the lean team to focus on quality and growth.
• HubSpot’s AI emphasizes privacy at the core, ensuring complete control over data while maintaining stringent security measures, per Holland. Its AI includes Zero Data Retention to immediately delete sensitive business information by third-party AI providers after LLM processing, EU Regional Data Control to process region-specific data and allow all LLM-powered features to run within Europe without additional setup, and Data Masking to automatically detect and mask personal data before AI processing.
• Per a statement provided by HubSpot, “We’re committed to doing the right thing with human oversight, professional content moderation, and transparent model cards that provide easy-to-understand information about our AI features.”

The push for AI transparency: HubSpot is leading the pack in a broader trend towards AI transparency amid concerns over data safety violations.

• AI companies commonly scrape the internet for training data, which involves gathering sensitive information—often without express consent. Once the model is trained on this data, it becomes impossible to remove, presenting significant privacy concerns.
• Privacy is one of the biggest concerns users have over AI; 76% of consumers are wary of sharing data for personalization. Data privacy is also a major concern among marketers, with 61% of marketing executives worldwide concerned about data privacy and another 61% concerned about security.

Our take: HubSpot’s commitment to data privacy could set a trend for other companies looking to expand into AI but concerned over user sentiment and safety.

• HubSpot offers a unique value proposition that has proven successful so far, which could encourage others to follow suit—investing in AI for its innovative capabilities while keeping consumers’ safety front and center.
• The move indicates a shift in AI policies, where companies anticipate the risk that comes with using AI technology and implement measures to prevent broader pushback.