On 21 October 2025, the National AI Centre (NAIC) of Australia released the Guidance for AI Adoption. The guide assists Australian business in adopting AI technologies safely and responsibly. It aligns with Australia’s existing AI Ethics Principles and international standards. Through six actionable key practices, it helps organizations build trust while effectively planning, managing, and deploying AI.
To accommodate varying levels of AI maturity and complexity, the guide offers two versions. The first targets organizations beginning their AI journey. It provides clear, executable steps focused on aligning AI with business objectives and establishing foundational governance. The second addresses organizations managing more complex systems or scaling AI deployment. It delivers detailed technical guidance to strengthen governance, enhance oversight, and embed responsible AI practices across systems, processes, and decision-making.
The guidance outlines 6 practices to help organizations plan, manage and use AI in ways that build trust and deliver value:
- Decide who is accountable: Organizations should appoint a senior leader as overall governance owner. A designated individual must also be responsible for each AI system, especially those making significant automated decisions affecting people or the enterprise.
- Understand impacts and plan accordingly: Conduct stakeholder impact assessments. This prevents systems from amplifying bias or generating large-scale inaccurate outputs.
- Measure and manage risks: implement AI-specific risk management: Establish risk screening process to identify unacceptable risks. Set up risk management processes that account for the differences between traditional IT, narrow AI, general purpose AI and agentic AI systems.
- Share essential information: Publicly disclose AI usage and maintain thorough documentation of critical details. This fosters accountability and trust.
- Test and monitor: Given the unpredictable and evolving nature of AI behavior, rigorous testing and ongoing monitoring ensure systems perform as intended and detect performance drift.
- Maintain human control: Define clear intervention points so humans can pause, override, or shut down systems when necessary.
The Guidance for AI Adoption encourages organizations to adapt these practices flexibly according to their specific use cases. It provides a practical framework for responsible AI implementation and stresses the importance of documentation. Organizations are advised to record key activities for each practice to enable future audits and reviews. This supports continuous learning and improvement of governance as AI applications evolve.
Ultimately, the guide offers Australian business a balanced pathway that promotes innovation while preserving trust and responsibility in AI deployment.