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Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) in electric utilities signifies vast, yet largely untapped potential for accelerating a clean energy transition. This requires tackling complex challenges such as trustworthiness, explainability, pri- vacy, cybersecurity, and governance, balancing these against AI’s benefits. This article aims to facilitate dialogue among regulators, policymakers, utilities, and other stakeholders on navigating these complex issues, fostering a shared under- standing and approach to leveraging AI’s transformative power responsibly. The complex interplay of state and federal regulations necessitates careful coordina- tion, particularly as AI impacts energy markets and national security. Promoting data sharing with privacy and cybersecurity in mind is critical. The article advo- cates for ‘realistic open benchmarks’ to foster innovation without compromising confidentiality. Trustworthiness (the system’s ability to ensure reliability and per- formance, and to inspire confidence and transparency) and explainability (ensur- ing that AI decisions are understandable and accessible to a large diversity of par- ticipants) are fundamental for AI acceptance, necessitating transparent, accountable, and reliable systems. AI must be deployed in a way that helps keep the lights on. As AI becomes more involved in decision-making, we need to think about who’s responsible and what’s ethical. With the current state of the art, using generative AI for critical, near real-time decision-making should be approached carefully. While AI is advancing rapidly both in terms of technology and regula- tion, within and beyond the scope of energy specific applications, this article aims to provide timely insights and a common understanding of AI, its opportunities and challenges for electric utility use cases, and ultimately help advance its adop- tion in the power system sector, to accelerate the equitable clean energy transition.