Saudi Arabia Advances AI Governance With New Risk Management Framework
Saudi Arabia has introduced a national framework to help government agencies and companies identify and manage risks tied to artificial intelligence as adoption of the technology accelerates across the Kingdom.
The National AI Risk Management Framework, developed by the Saudi Data and AI Authority, provides a unified methodology for identifying, assessing, treating and monitoring AI-related risks, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The framework acknowledges that these risks can emerge unexpectedly, evolve over time, and prove harder to explain or reproduce than issues tied to more conventional technology.
The initiative arrives as commercial registrations tied to AI activity keep climbing in Saudi Arabia, reaching 24,552 by recent count, up from 19,042 at the end of 2025 and 14,163 the year before, according to Ministry of Commerce data. Saudi Arabia has designated 2026 as its Year of AI, with the Saudi Data and AI Authority leading related programs under the National Strategy for Data and AI as part of Vision 2030.
For businesses, the framework arrives as companies expand their use of autonomous systems, raising questions around data access, decision-making authority and human oversight. Mohammed El-Shaari, an enterprise AI specialist and chief technology officer at HotDesk, said companies should carefully examine their own operations before adopting any autonomous system, arguing that a structured consultation, discovery and risk-analysis phase should be a core requirement for any company planning to adopt these solutions. He said businesses should map out the workflows they intend to automate, the data systems involved, the decisions the system may make, and potential failure scenarios before deployment. Higher-risk systems should undergo testing for accuracy, security and bias, he added, while companies should restrict access to sensitive data, log AI-generated actions, and require human sign-off on consequential decisions. He noted that a basic customer-service chatbot shouldn’t be governed the same way as a system capable of accessing financial data or approving transactions on a company’s behalf.
The framework is organized around four phases: defining the context and scope of a given AI system, identifying and assessing its risks, addressing those risks, and continuously monitoring and reviewing the system afterward. Bindesh Vijayan, co-founder and chief technology officer of Myndlab, said Saudi Arabia’s approach is built around managing risk according to potential impact rather than treating every application the same way, adding that the biggest shift for companies will be treating AI risk as an engineering responsibility rather than a compliance check performed at the end of a project.
The framework relies on a matrix weighing the likelihood and potential impact of a given risk to help organizations gauge its severity and prioritize their response, covering seven principal risk categories and seven core principles, including integrity, privacy, transparency and accountability. The Saudi Data and AI Authority launched the framework in July and has since introduced its methodology to more than 150 specialists representing 45 public and private sector organizations at a forum held in Riyadh.
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