What is AI assurance?
AI assurance is the set of activities that give stakeholders justified confidence that an AI system behaves as claimed and meets stated requirements. It combines testing, review, documentation and independent checks, including audits, and produces evidence that can be examined by people outside the team that built or runs the system.
In practice, assurance ranges from internal control testing and technical evaluations to third-party audits. An AI audit is one form of assurance: a structured, usually independent examination of a system or management process against criteria such as a law, a standard or an internal policy.
Assurance is not the same as compliance. A clean assessment supports a claim; it does not guarantee that a regulator or auditor will reach the same view.