Shadow AI has climbed to the top of many security and governance risk concerns, and for good reason. But the phrase itself is slippery: different teams use it to mean different things, and the detection tools being marketed as ‘Shadow AI detectors’ often only catch a narrow slice of the problem. That mismatch creates confusion for security and compliance teams, and business leaders who only want one thing: reduce data leakage, regulatory exposure, and business risk without strangling the organization’s ability to innovate.
