TM Forum launches industry initiative to enable trusted AI autonomy in collaboration with Accenture

Multi-year Trustworthy AI program will help telcos scale AI and autonomous operations confidently with the industry's first AI trust certification.

DALLAS, TX, UNITED STATES, October 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- TM Forum today announced a new strategic industry collaboration program with Accenture to help the telecom industry to deploy autonomous operations with verifiable evidence that agent-to-agent interactions and decisions are trustworthy and can deliver business outcomes at scale.

Boards and leadership teams are under exceptional pressure to demonstrate business results with AI, with trust becoming the pre-requisite for delegating decisions and actions to autonomous systems. Yet, according to recent TM Forum research, while 72% of CSPs believe their AI capabilities are trustworthy, only 14% can verify their claims. As AI systems take on greater autonomy, closing the gap between perceived and provable trust is critical to advancing the autonomous enterprise.

Through this multi-year initiative, TM Forum will team with Accenture to deliver the industry’s first Trustworthy AI Governance Certification, an industry-standard benchmark for trusted AI. This will provide a practical measure of the governance maturity, workforce readiness and operational accountability needed to scale AI and autonomy with confidence.

The goal is to transform AI trust from a policy aspiration into a measurable operational capability, giving organizations the evidence and criteria to assess, benchmark and scale autonomous operations, with accountability, transparency and control. By making trust measurable, the program will help leaders approve AI use cases faster, accelerate strategic decision-making, target investment planning and advance operational execution.

"Trust enables autonomy to scale, but trustworthiness only becomes operational when every principle is supported by continuous, verifiable evidence. This program gives the industry a common blueprint to turn trust from a promise into a measurable capability. TM Forum brings the industry together to define the standards, while Accenture brings the experience of putting them into practice. Together, we're creating the foundation for the autonomous enterprise," said Guy Lupo, EVP, Trustworthy AI and Data, TM Forum.

"Agentic AI marks a fundamental shift from AI supporting decisions to AI making decisions. As those systems take on more responsibility across critical business functions, organizations need practical ways to govern AI, manage risk and build confidence in its outcomes. Our collaboration is designed to help turn trustworthy AI from a strategic ambition into an operational reality," said Arnab Chakraborty, Chief Responsible AI Officer, Accenture.

The program will also deliver a practical industry blueprint to help organizations deploy and scale AI and autonomous operations with confidence. CSPs will be able to:

• Measure trust consistently and reduce complexity with a common framework for embedding trustworthy AI across telecom operations.
• Accelerate AI adoption and strengthen operational control with best-practice guidance spanning design, deployment and continuous monitoring.
• Benchmark trust maturity, expose critical gaps and prioritize investment using industry benchmarks and AI trust level validations.
• Build enterprise-wide capability and workforce readiness through training and certification pathways that support responsible scale.

The initiative will operate through TM Forum's AI-Native Collaboration Studios, where CSPs, vendors, hyperscalers, consultancies and the wider ecosystem co-create code-first solutions to industry challenges. With the AI-Native Open Digital Architecture (ODA) as the standards-based foundation, participating operators and industry partners will contribute real-world use cases, transformation experiences and implementation insights that will help shape and validate the new Trustworthy AI framework.

Learn more at Innovate Americas
“Trustworthy AI – Trust by design for the AI-native telco” is the opening keynote theme at Innovate Americas today. Keynotes from TM Forum, AT&T, T-Mobile and TELUS explore how leaders can move from principles to proof, embedding accountability, transparency and control into AI systems that can stand up to real-world scrutiny.

The Trustworthy AI initiative will also feature in the session “Responsible AI in Action: Operationalizing Trust at Scale”, where Chakraborty and Lupo will discuss the new program and its vision for the industry.

Katy Branson
TM Forum
kbranson@tmforum.org