As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
The shortest month of the year was a busy one for Europe’s policymakers, with several European Parliament groupings showing their cards in relation to the AI Act omnibus and overall position regarding deepfakes.
A Long Road Ahead: Effective Remedies for Artificial Intelligence Harms in the European Union
CDT Europe’s new report delves into the AI Act’s offering for victims of AI harms, and finds that the law on its own cannot guarantee access to effective remedies.
Joint Open Letter on Rejecting the Proposal to Undermine Transparency in the AI Act
CDT Europe, together with 60 organisations, signed an open letter by Access Now and European Digital Rights (EDRi), addressed to the EU institutions, urging them to reject the deletion of the AI Act’s Article 49(2) transparency safeguard for high-risk AI systems as proposed in the recent AI Omnibus.
Holding the Line: Preserving the Core Features of the EU’s GDPR
On European Data Protection Day, we urge decision makers to reflect on the implications of the Digital Omnibus proposal and to strive to protect the high standards of data protection that the GDPR has long guaranteed.
The start of 2026 is marked by mounting pressure points in EU AI policy: new rules on labelling AI-generated content, a deepening debate over sexual deepfakes, and sustained resistance to the Commission’s Omnibus Tech proposal. This month, we track where legal gaps are emerging and where rights protections are being defended.
Assessing AI: Surveying the Spectrum of Approaches to Understanding and Auditing AI Systems
CDT's report maps the spectrum of AI assessment approaches, from narrowest to broadest and from least to most independent, to identify which approaches best serve which goals.
State Legislatures Continued Their Focus on Public Sector AI Use and Expanded Attention to Risk Management Practices During the 2025 Legislative Session
