What is AI governance?
AI governance is the set of policies, processes, and oversight structures an organization uses to make sure its AI systems are developed and used responsibly, legally, and in line with its own standards. In practice it answers questions like who approves an AI use case, what data it may touch, and who is accountable when it goes wrong.
It typically covers risk assessment, documentation of models and their intended use, human oversight requirements, monitoring for bias or drift, and audit trails. Governance frameworks are often built to satisfy external rules such as the EU AI Act or the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, plus internal requirements around privacy and security.
The common pitfall is treating it as a one-off approval gate rather than ongoing monitoring, since an AI system's behaviour and its risks change as data and usage evolve.
