AI in OT Environments: What IEC 62443 and NIS2 Require When LLMs Touch Industrial Control Systems
Manufacturing OT environments now host AI tools for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, work-instruction generation, quality inspection, and operator copilots. The AI calls cross zones that IEC 62443 was designed to segment and bring NIS2 incident reporting and supply chain obligations into the operational technology footprint. Most OT deployments use AI through cloud APIs that violate the segmentation assumptions of the IEC 62443 reference model. This piece walks through where AI sits in modern OT, what IEC 62443 and NIS2 require for the AI traffic, and the inspection architecture that produces records the regulator and the customer auditor will accept.