How Compliance Teams Can Turn AI Risk into Opportunity
AI is moving faster than regulation, creating both opportunities and risks for compliance teams. While governments work on new rules, businesses must not remain idle.
The Role of Governance, Risk, and Compliance
AI is reshaping the landscape of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), compelling organizations to adapt their approaches. Compliance teams are expected to evolve from mere risk mitigators to trusted advisors that can unlock new markets, shorten sales cycles, and reinforce organizational trust at scale.
Regulatory Progress and the Need for Proactivity
Though regulators are making progress, the speed of AI innovation continues to outpace regulatory developments. This gap results in risks emerging before formal guardrails are established. Frameworks like NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001 offer structured methods to manage AI risks. By adopting these principles—such as transparency, explainability, and continuous oversight—organizations can prepare for future regulations while demonstrating proactive trustworthiness.
Preparing for Varied AI Regulations
AI-specific regulations will likely differ significantly across jurisdictions, much like privacy laws. To prepare, compliance teams should adopt a “global-first, local-fast” mindset, establishing a foundation in universal principles while being ready to adjust to local requirements. Proven risk management practices—identifying, assessing, mitigating, and monitoring risks—provide stability across different regions.
Data Privacy in the Age of AI
Traditional systems process data in predictable ways, while AI handles vast datasets in less transparent manners. Compliance leaders must ensure that AI models are unbiased, accountable, and transparent. This requires a thorough understanding of data lineage, ensuring that sensitive data is not used without explicit justification. Validation of AI models should be an ongoing process, with continuous monitoring essential for lawful and appropriate data use over time.
Steps for Compliance Officers
Compliance officers should know the data elements that train their AI models and ensure visibility into AI usage across the organization. AI can assist in evidence collection and real-time compliance reporting, helping teams detect gaps and misalignments faster than traditional methods. Ongoing validation and monitoring are crucial as AI models evolve.
The Impact of AI on Compliance
AI is set to make compliance both harder and easier. It introduces new risks, such as bias and data leakage, requiring compliance teams to navigate challenges they have not faced before. However, AI can also streamline time-consuming tasks such as risk assessments, evidence collection, and audit preparation, significantly reducing the time required for these processes.
Ultimately, compliance is transitioning from a back-office function to a continuous, adaptive discipline supported by automation and AI. Real-time data enables ongoing risk assessment and dynamic adjustments, marking a significant shift in how compliance operates in response to evolving risks.
