The article highlights how the rapid regulatory and risk landscape surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) is driving the emergence of a new function within corporate legal departments: the AI compliance officer. As businesses increasingly deploy AI across operations—from customer-facing applications to internal decision-making—governments worldwide are introducing laws and enforcement actions to address associated dangers. In this context, in-house legal teams are uniquely positioned to lead governance efforts due to their familiarity with regulatory risk, cross-functional coordination, and operational context.
The regulatory backdrop is complex and growing. In the U.S., agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have already taken enforcement actions tied to AI-related issues — for example, consumer-protection cases involving misleading claims (“AI washing”) and employment discrimination via automated tools. On the state level, laws such as California’s SB 53 aim to regulate “frontier AI” models, and internationally, the EU AI Act is poised to impose stringent obligations on high-risk systems. This regulatory patchwork means that companies must navigate overlapping obligations across jurisdictions—making compliance a strategic imperative rather than a back-office function.
Because of the interplay between legal, technology and business operations, the role of AI compliance officer involves cross-departmental collaboration. Legal teams must work with product, data, engineering, risk and vendor-management functions to: catalogue AI systems in use, assess impact and bias risks, review vendor contracts and third-party AI usage, ensure transparency and labeling where required, and escalate issues up to executive leadership and board level. In-house counsel with this remit can help embed risk-aware thinking into AI deployment — for example, ensuring that training data is handled properly, model appropriate use-cases are defined, and documentation is maintained to support audit trails and legal privilege where needed.
The article concludes that companies should act proactively — rather than reactively — and consider creating internal AI governance frameworks now. Steps include developing policies for responsible AI use, conducting impact assessments, monitoring regulatory changes, and training leadership and staff. In effect, legal teams are not simply “playing catch-up”; they are becoming strategic enablers of AI innovation while managing risk. As regulatory scrutiny increases and AI becomes more embedded in business processes, the AI compliance officer role appears poised to become standard in forward-looking corporations.
