A new tool designed to support businesses around the use of and risk with artificial intelligence has been launched.

Global broking group Aon has unveiled its AI Risk Diagnostic, an enterprise-level assessment designed to help organisations understand and manage AI-related risk. It added the diagnostic provides a structured view of AI governance, maturity and risk exposure as AI becomes increasingly embedded across business operations.

“Artificial intelligence is creating significant opportunities for organizations, but it is also introducing new and increasingly complex risk considerations across governance, compliance, operations and resilience,” said Richard Waterer, Aon Global Risk Consulting leader. “As boards, regulators and stakeholders seek greater visibility into how AI is being deployed and governed, organizations need a clearer understanding of their AI maturity, control environment and exposure. Our AI Risk Diagnostic helps provide that visibility, enabling leaders to make better-informed decisions about governance, oversight and responsible innovation.”

The broker added that as AI adoption accelerates, organisations face growing expectations to demonstrate effective governance, oversight and control of AI-related risks.

“Aon’s AI Risk Diagnostic delivers an independent, enterprise-level assessment of AI risk, controls and maturity, helping organizations evaluate their AI governance and identify where AI may be creating or amplifying risk,” it added.

The diagnostic analyses client inputs through two complementary lenses:

• AI Maturity Analysis, which assesses the maturity of AI governance, lifecycle management, processes and controls.
• AI Risk Taxonomy Analysis, which identifies areas where AI may create new risks or amplify existing exposures across the organization.

Once the analysis has been completed clients receive tailored reporting that includes:

• An overall assessment of AI maturity, key governance gaps and priority areas of action.
• Visual dashboards, heat maps and risk exposure mapping across key AI risk domains.
• Prioritized recommendations to strengthen governance, controls, compliance and resilience.

“By linking AI maturity with risk exposure, the AI risk diagnostic helps organisations identify governance gaps, understand where AI may be creating operational, regulatory, cyber, liability and business risks and prioritise actions to strengthen resilience, compliance and oversight,” Aon added. “The assessment provides a clearer foundation for AI-related decision-making across the organisation.”

The launch came days after it was announced that Open AI’s test AI system had independently attacked the open-source AI platform, Hugging Face.

Ben Watson, class underwriter, cyber, at Westfield Specialty International, said: “This incident is a perfect example of the widening governance gap in AI, where autonomous capabilities are advancing faster than the controls designed to oversee them. Organisations need sufficient freedom to innovate with AI, but this must be balanced with robust governance, monitoring and clear accountability frameworks.

“The underlying cyber risks are not new – protecting against data breaches and attacks by external threat actors has long been central to cybersecurity. But managing AI risk is particularly challenging because the technology’s full capabilities, behaviours and potential failure modes are not yet fully understood. As AI adoption accelerates globally, organisations will apply different levels of risk tolerance and governance maturity, making further high-profile failures and unintended consequences increasingly likely.”