In the United States, every federal agency is required to designate one, by executive directive; in Europe, it is the organisational answer to the most uncomfortable question of the moment: who is ultimately accountable for the Artificial Intelligence an organisation uses? A portrait of the Chief AI Officer – between the American mandate, Europe’s demand for AI-governance roles and the Italian benchmark of the UNI 11621-8:2026 standard.
Some professional figures arise from the bottom up, through the spontaneous aggregation of competences; others come into being by act of authority. The Chief AI Officer (CAIO) belongs, at least in part, to the second family: it was the US federal administration that, through its own directives, imposed the appointment of one in every executive agency, turning a sound organisational practice into an internal administrative obligation. It is worth starting there to understand what this role actually does, and then to gauge whether – and how far – the European market is calling for it.
The American mandate
With Memorandum M-24-10 of 28 March 2024, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) implemented the executive order on AI by requiring every federal agency to appoint a Chief AI Officer: the act specifies that the order “tasks CAIOs with primary responsibility in their agencies […] for coordinating their agency’s use of AI, promoting AI innovation, managing risks from the use of AI”, and describes the role as “the senior advisor for AI to the head of the agency”. The framework survived the change of administration: Memorandum M-25-21 of 3 April 2025, which “rescinds and replaces” M-24-10, restates the obligation in express terms: “Within 60 days of the issuance of this memorandum, the head of each agency must retain or designate a Chief AI Officer (CAIO)”. Not an Act of Congress, then, but an executive directive binding on the agencies – a distinction that serves precision without detracting from the substance.
The resulting catalogue of duties reads as an operational description of the job: an annual inventory of use cases, risk assessment for systems that bear on safety and rights, continuous performance monitoring, advice to senior leadership on investment and skills, and responsible-AI policies. Industry guidance converges: this is “an executive role within an organization focused on overseeing the development, strategy and implementation of AI technologies” (IBM).
Inside the organisation: strategy, risk, people, accountability
In practice, four responsibilities define the function. The first is strategy: translating the organisation’s objectives into a prioritised portfolio of AI initiatives, complete with metrics and exit criteria – because more than a few organisations accumulate pilot projects that are never closed nor scaled. The second is risk governance: an inventory of systems, classification of use cases, oversight of compliance with Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (the AI Act) and Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the GDPR), and alignment with voluntary governance tools such as the management system based on the UNI CEI ISO/IEC 42001 standard. The third is people: AI-literacy programmes and the development of specialist profiles. The fourth is accountability: the CAIO answers for AI before the governing body, and must be able to translate technical metrics into information that is genuinely useful for decision-making.
A function Europe is calling for, even when it does not name it
And the European market? The legal framework, first of all, pushes in the same direction: Decision (EU) 2022/2481, establishing the Digital Decade policy programme 2030, sets among the Union’s targets that “the number of ICT specialists employed in the Union is at least 20 million, while promoting the access of women to this field”. Within that frame, the European analysis of AI-skills needs carried out by the EU co-funded Artificial Intelligence Skills Alliance (ARISA) has recorded the emerging demand precisely for governance roles: “AI management & support roles are also emerging with the most foreseen need for AI strategists, AI ethics officers and AI quality controller”. The label varies – AI strategist, head of AI strategy, Chief AI Officer – but the function required is the same: someone to govern.
The Italian benchmark
In Italy the role now has a verifiable perimeter: the UNI 11621-8:2026 standard on professional role profiles relating to AI places the Chief AI Officer at the head of the twelve regulated profiles, with competences set out according to the methodology of the European e-Competence Framework, the UNI EN 16234-1 standard. Anyone wishing to have such competences attested may undergo assessment by an accredited body, under the UNI CEI EN ISO/IEC 17024 standard, within the framework defined by Accredia Information Circular DC No. 21/2026.
Conclusions
The story of the Chief AI Officer tells of a convergence: Washington imposed it by directive on its agencies, Europe records the need for it in its skills analyses, and Italy has written its profile into a technical standard. Three different roads to the same conclusion: in an organisation, Artificial Intelligence either has someone accountable for it or it has a problem.
In the light of the above, one wonders how many Italian organisations, public and private, could today name without hesitation the person who answers for their AI; and for as long as that answer is slow in coming, the first investment to make is not a technological one.
