AI Assurance vs AI Governance: Essential Guide to Avoid Risk
AI governance sets the rules, roles and decision rights for the AI you run. AI assurance is the evidence that those rules were followed and that the system behaves as claimed. The two words are used interchangeably, and the confusion costs money: policies nobody tests, or tests nobody asked for. This guide separates them cleanly with a side-by-side comparison table, the assurance techniques that actually produce evidence a buyer or regulator will accept, a RACI grid for who owns what, what the UK’s assurance-led approach and the EU AI Act each demand, realistic cost profiles, a 90-day plan to stand both up, and the mistakes that make an assurance programme worthless.
