Aston Martin puts back-end AI to work while keeping agents off its website
SiliconANGLE Jonathan Anthony ● Covered by 2 sources
Aston Martin is using AI in its back office, not on its website. The point is speed and control: it wants the gains without changing the customer feel.
Based on reporting by SiliconANGLE, Jonathan Anthony — read the original for the full story.
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Aston Martin is drawing a hard line around where AI belongs. The company is testing back-end uses that can improve operations, but it does not want an AI agent anywhere near the front end of its website. For a maker of handcrafted, highly personalized cars, that split is part strategy and part brand protection.
Steve O’Connor, Aston Martin’s chief information officer, said the company reviews each AI idea by looking first at profit and loss, then at efficiency. The current focus includes back-office work such as configure-price-quote. He described the approach bluntly: “We’re AI delayers, not deniers.”
That caution is also about customer experience. O’Connor said customers will never see an AI agent on the Aston Martin website because that is not what they want from the brand. The company is trying to keep the human, personalized feel at the point of sale while letting software handle the less glamorous work behind it.
The conversations around this came during Infor Velocity Week, where O’Connor spoke with Max Fisher, Infor’s director of product management. Fisher said Infor’s AI Adoption Hub builds a roadmap from public filings, meeting transcripts and known problems, and that use cases can now take weeks instead of quarters. He also said more than half of businesses struggle to scale AI.
Aston Martin’s answer is governance with a face on it. The company assigns someone in the business to own each AI agent’s outcomes, and O’Connor warned that leaders need to fix their data and processes before piling AI on top of ERP. He also said a large governance framework can choke innovation, which is a tidy reminder that enterprise AI often fails less from lack of ambition than from overbuilt caution.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right instinct. Put AI where it saves time, not where it can cosplay as a luxury brand ambassador. A lot of companies are rushing to plaster agents on every customer touchpoint because it sounds modern; Aston Martin is doing the less glamorous, more sensible thing and keeping the robot in the back office. That’s usually where the good stuff lives anyway, especially in Europe, where customers tend to notice when “innovation” is just a chatbot with a nicer font.
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