Lego to expand its AI toolbox: "Terrible examples out there must not happen under our brand"

Lego plans to add AI to its digital toolbox, but cautiously. Morten Lundsgaard Degn, Vice President for Digital Technology at Lego, said so at Ingeniøren's Digital Tech Summit in Copenhagen. Lego now has 34,000 employees in 40 countries, and he said nearly everything it does is driven by digital technology, soon to be driven by AI as well. He called AI a fixed part of the company's journey, but a tool that "won't solve it for you."

Degn said AI is not currently in Lego's toolbox but will be. The company is looking at many technologies and will apply them case by case where they make most sense, weighing frameworks, data and integration so that use can scale, since otherwise it becomes very expensive. He noted that many employees use AI privately and are sometimes disappointed by what is allowed at work.

Top management's message is that AI is not released without human oversight and that nothing is fully automated. Degn tied this to the Lego brand and to children: "You have seen horrible examples out there of what AI can be used for. That will not happen under our brand." Security and compliance are checked for every use. Lego is careful but experiments a lot in order to learn.

Lego is also upgrading its factories, which were not designed for automation, digitalisation or AI. Management has approved investment of many millions across six, soon seven, large factories to build a base for scaling AI-driven automation.

Two years ago, CEO Niels B. Christiansen told Avisen Danmark that Lego uses AI for sales forecasting, product recommendations and a customer-service chatbot. ChatGPT is the only general tool employees may use, and only under guidelines that bar sharing sensitive Lego material, to protect factory secrets.

A reader commenting on the piece questioned whether Lego has considered the risk of sending business secrets to US services, or running an open-weight model itself.