Translating trust into action: Communication is central to AI governance

Governance frameworks fail not because they are poorly designed but because they are poorly understood. Well-intentioned policies, regulatory guidance, and institutional architectures become meaningless if the people who must implement them — and the publics they serve — do not understand what they mean, why they matter, and how they will improve outcomes.

This is the communication imperative at the heart of modern AI governance. As societies grapple with how to harness artificial intelligence’s potential while mitigating its risks, clear, strategic, and transparent communication emerges not as a supplementary function but as foundational to governance itself.

Trust is the bedrock of any governance system, yet it is also the most fragile. Without trust, policies fail. Adoption stagnates. Compliance weakens. Citizens disengage. Trust is not created by issuing regulations or publishing policy documents — it is built through consistent, transparent, and honest communication. Trust architecture requires communication at multiple levels simultaneously. Institutions must explain their decisions transparently, acknowledge uncertainties and risks honestly, and demonstrate accountability when problems emerge. When communicators consistently say what institutions will do and then follow through, trust accumulates. When there are gaps between promises and reality, trust evaporates rapidly.

In AI governance specifically, the communication challenge is acute. The technology is complex and evolving rapidly. Public understanding varies widely. Media narratives oscillate between utopian enthusiasm and catastrophic fear. Communicators must build nuanced understanding — acknowledging genuine opportunities and legitimate risks - in a media landscape that often rewards extreme positions.

The most effective governance communication establishes "informed confidence" - where stakeholders understand the challenges, trust that competent institutions are managing them, and believe they have voice and agency in how governance unfolds.

Policy communication faces a central challenge: translating complex concepts into comprehensible language without sacrificing accuracy. Modern AI governance addresses intricate topics — graded liability systems, data-protection exemptions, classification of actor roles, incident-reporting mechanisms, algorithmic-fairness assessment, and deepfake-detection standards. These technical and legal matters must be understandable to vastly different audiences: policymakers in state governments, compliance officers in start-ups, risk managers in financial institutions, civil-society organisations, and informed citizens. Each requires different communication approaches.

Communicators face a genuine tension: translating without oversimplifying, making content accessible without losing technical accuracy. This requires deliberate design choices - using plain language, providing concrete examples, employing visual explanations, tailoring messages for different audiences, and ensuring multilingual availability. This design-centric approach recognises that understandability is foundational. When policymakers understand regulatory rationale, they implement more effectively. When industry understands liability implications, it makes more responsible decisions. When civil society grasps accountability mechanisms, it can hold institutions to account.

Governance frameworks are stronger when they incorporate diverse perspectives, stakeholders feel heard, and decisions are transparently explained. Communicators orchestrate this engagement by designing meaningful consultation processes, establishing accessible feedback mechanisms, and demonstrating how inputs shaped decisions.

Multi-stakeholder engagement serves multiple functions simultaneously. It identifies implementation challenges early. It builds constituencies invested in policy success. It ensures marginalised voices are part of the conversation from the start. It enhances decision legitimacy, increasing voluntary compliance.

In diverse societies, meaningful engagement requires particular care. Participation cannot be limited to policy elites. It must actively reach excluded communities using local languages, community forums, mobile platforms, and trusted local organisations.

What creates accountability? One key mechanism is transparency — when organisations publicly explain decisions, compliance efforts, and what happens when things go wrong. Yet transparency alone is insufficient; accountability emerges when transparency is expected, public-scrutiny mechanisms exist, and institutions demonstrate learning from failures.

Incident reporting presents a significant communication challenge. Conventionally, organisations hide failures, fearing reputational damage. Emerging governance approaches recommend a different model: normalising incident reporting, perceiving it as responsible rather than negligent, and treating incidents as learning opportunities.

This cultural shift is fundamentally a communication challenge. Communicators must reframe how failure is understood — showing that reporting problems signals competence and responsibility. This requires sustained communication where regulators publicly analyse incident patterns and organisations explain what they learned. Governance increasingly relies on voluntary measures — industry codes, certifications, and standards — as regulation complements them. Yet voluntary compliance succeeds only when frameworks are visible, understood, and valued. Communicators build narratives around voluntary compliance. They make certification programmes credible and meaningful. They provide recognition for responsible practices through media coverage and investor communications. They create visible markers — certifications, ratings, endorsements — that consumers and investors recognise and reward. This narrative-building work is essential because voluntary frameworks lack enforcement mechanisms. Compliance depends on reputation and stakeholder perception. Well-communicated frameworks become meaningful; poorly communicated ones remain marginal.

As societies implement governance frameworks addressing complex challenges, communication effectiveness determines success. Well-designed policies fail if not understood. Regulations face resistance if not explained. Accountability mechanisms fail if not transparent. Communicators are essential architects of effective governance. They build trust enabling adoption. They translate complexity into accessibility. They facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue. They create accountability through transparency. They ensure policy reaches and protects all communities. In this sense, communication is not something added after governance is designed — it is foundational to governance itself. It is how principles become practice, how regulations achieve compliance, how institutions build legitimacy.

The most effective governance will not be determined solely by policy sophistication. It will be determined by how well those frameworks are understood, believed in, and embraced by the institutions and people responsible for their success.

The writer is a former civil servant, who writes on cinema and strategic communication. With inputs from Zoya Ahmad and Vaishnavie Srinivasan; views are personal