Multimodal Deployment Risks in Manufacturing AI: A Survey of Boundary Failures, Taxonomy, and Governance in Industry 5.0
Abstract
Manufacturing AI systems increasingly rely on heterogeneous and interacting signals---from physical sensors and visual inspection streams to cyber/operational logs and human--machine interaction cues. In such multimodal settings, deployment risks rarely arise from a single model or dataset; instead, they emerge at cross-modal boundaries where signals are delayed, misaligned, or inconsistently interpreted across the socio-technical pipeline. We conduct a structured review of peer-reviewed studies, industrial reports, and international standards (2010--2025), synthesising evidence from over 80 relevant sources. Our analysis shows that safety, reliability, and accountability failures are often amplified by multimodal coupling (e.g., sensor--vision conflicts, log--control inconsistencies, and human-in-the-loop misunderstandings). Based on the synthesis above, we organise the identified deployment risks into a multimodal-aware taxonomy comprising five interrelated layers: data, model, system, organisational, and governance/ethical. Rather than treating these layers in isolation, the taxonomy explicitly links risk categories to mitigation approaches that operate across modalities, including technical controls, human-centred operational practices, and standards-driven governance mechanisms (e.g., NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC~23894, ISO/IEC~42001). In addition, the review highlights several unresolved issues in multimodal manufacturing AI, including the lack of quantitative indicators for deployment risk, limited transferability across production contexts, insufficient empirical evidence on human factors, and the absence of machine-readable representations that connect risk signals to governance actions. Viewed through the lens of Industry 5.0, these findings suggest that systematic attention to multimodal interactions is essential for deploying AI systems that genuinely support worker well-being, operational resilience, and long-term sustainability in manufacturing practice.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Digital Transformation in Industry
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2026
- Publisher
- ACM
- Pages
- 888–897
- Publication date
- 28 May 2026