How the AI Era Is Reshaping Data Protection

Google's Kristie Chon Flynn on Building Privacy Into the AI Development Life Cycle Tom Field (SecurityEditor) • March 24, 2026

Three years into the modern artificial intelligence revolution, data protection can no longer be an afterthought - it must be engineered in from the start, said Kristie Chon Flynn, data protection officer of privacy, safety, security engineering at Google.

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AI era demands a fundamental rethink of data protection: build it in, don't bolt it on. Flynn said privacy-enhancing technologies, or PETs, are what make that scalable. Tools such as differential privacy, synthetic data and trusted execution environments have moved from academic research into practical use, enabling organizations to embed privacy directly into the AI development life cycle.

"Good governance is not static, it's dynamic," she said. "It is understanding who needs to make what kind of risk decision, and ...