Southeast Asia has overtaken every other region in SAS’s latest measure of trustworthy artificial intelligence, outperforming the global benchmark across all five dimensions the study tracks while organisations in the region adopt more autonomous AI systems.

The findings come from the second annual Data and AI Impact Report: The New Economics of Trust, produced with research insights from IDC. The report found that organisations investing in trustworthy AI measures are 15 times more likely to report strong or high returns on their AI spending.

Trust gap narrows as scores rise across the board

Southeast Asia’s Trustworthiness Index rose 8.8 points to 66.5 in 2026, while its Trust Gap — the difference between how much people believe AI can be trusted and what it can demonstrably prove — narrowed from 14.6 points to 6.6 points. All five dimensions improved: data quality and governance rose 10.7 points to 66.7, model governance and oversight climbed 14 points to 64.2, explainability and fairness gained 6.5 points to 63.7, responsible AI policy rose 9.8 points to 71.2, and audit and accountability increased 11.3 points to 70.5.

“When AI works, it’s incredibly impactful. However, it is well documented that state-of-the-art agents can have error rates that exceed 25 per cent on complex tasks, which is unacceptable in high-stakes decision-making,” said Bryan Harris, Chief Technology Officer at SAS.

Harris said organisations need to embed domain expertise into agentic workflows and keep people at the centre of governance to close the trust gap.

Infrastructure and returns struggle to keep pace

Despite the gains in trust scores, the region’s AI maturity is rising faster than its infrastructure can support: advanced AI maturity climbed 20.5 points, against just 4.1 points for infrastructure maturity. The share of organisations reporting strong or high ROI on AI investments fell from 36.7 per cent to 28.7 per cent, even as trust scores improved. The proportion of organisations conducting regular AI audits or impact assessments also dropped, from 47.3 per cent to 21.3 per cent, despite rising audit and accountability scores.

“As AI becomes more autonomous, organisations face a new challenge: maintaining confidence in systems people don’t fully understand,” said Chris Marshall, Vice President at IDC.

Marshall said stronger oversight, explainability, accountability and data foundations are becoming prerequisites for scaling AI.

The study surveyed 2,699 decision-makers across 28 countries, with Southeast Asia represented as a sample-weighted composite of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand based on 122 respondents in 2026.