Seth Cohen Talks About Accelerating AI Adoption for Lasting Business Impact

P&G is creating the CPG company of the future, with AI playing a key role in accelerating its transformation. At HumanX 2026, a conference that gathers 6,500 AI leaders, builders and inventors, P&G’s CIO Seth Cohen took the stage to share how the company embeds AI across its operations to turn insight into impact and deliver sustained, strong business results.

From AI Potential to Business Impact

For many organizations, the conversation around AI has shifted. The question is no longer where AI can create value, but how to ensure it delivers consistently and at scale.

At P&G, that means moving beyond experimentation and embedding AI directly into how the company operates. From how teams innovate to how they serve consumers, AI is integrated into the business itself.

This shift from experimentation to execution enables AI to deliver real, lasting impact.

Data as the Foundation

P&G’s approach to AI starts with data. Over more than a decade, the company has invested in building a strong data foundation, freeing data across systems, geographies, and functions while ensuring it is structured, high quality, and trusted.

As Cohen put it, “AI without data is simply ‘A’…artificial.”

With millions of consumer touchpoints captured each year, P&G combines data, human expertise, and advanced technology to unlock deeper insights and deliver superior consumer experiences. This foundation allows the company to move faster, make better decisions, and scale AI effectively across the enterprise.

Scaling Innovation and Operations

To translate insight into impact, P&G has adopted a platform-based approach that enables AI capabilities to scale across the organization. Teams build from shared platforms, allowing them to move quickly, reuse solutions, and drive consistency across brands and markets.

This approach is accelerating innovation in tangible ways. Cohen highlighted how P&G teams identified an unmet consumer need for sun protection in hair care. Using AI, they were able to rapidly develop the Pantene Sunkiss Glow Spray, moving from insight to product concept, packaging, and communications in just days instead of weeks. The result was a superior product, delivered with greater speed and consistency across every touchpoint.

At the same time, AI is transforming operations. From touchless manufacturing environments to more efficient supply chain systems, P&G is improving productivity, reducing downtime, and creating more resilient operations while enabling employees to focus on higher value work.

Empowering People to Lead

While AI is a powerful enabler, Cohen emphasized that people remain at the center of transformation. P&G is focused on equipping employees with the tools and capabilities needed to work effectively with AI, enabling them to focus on higher value tasks and drive better outcomes. Research conducted with Harvard Business School and P&G reinforces this approach, showing that individuals and teams using AI significantly outperform those who do not.

Cohen closed with a clear message for leaders navigating AI adoption: lasting impact comes from how AI is applied across the business, not just where it is deployed.

To drive meaningful results at scale, leaders should focus on:

• Combining data, human expertise, and technology to turn insight into real business impact
• Building scalable platforms, not one-off solutions, so capabilities can be reused and expanded across the enterprise
• Investing in trusted, high-quality data as the foundation for effective AI adoption
• Preparing people to work alongside intelligent systems, enabling teams to focus on higher-value work

Companies that succeed will be those that apply AI to their existing unique strengths and use it to drive consistent, scalable growth.