AI Safety Institutes Around the World

The UK set up its AI Safety Institute in November 2023, around the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit. It grew out of the Frontier AI Taskforce and became one of the best-funded government AI evaluation teams, hiring researchers from leading labs. In February 2025 it was renamed the AI Security Institute. The new name reflected a narrower focus on national-security harms such as cyber misuse, chemical and biological risks, and crime, rather than broader issues such as bias. The US AI Safety Institute was created within NIST in late 2023, after President Biden's executive order on AI. In June 2025 the Commerce Department reorganized it as the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). The mandate shifted toward voluntary standards, national-security-relevant evaluations, and assessing foreign AI systems, while dropping the "safety" branding. Japan, Singapore, Canada, South Korea, France and others have set up similar bodies. The EU's AI Office has some parallel functions, but it is a regulator. In November 2024 the International Network of AI Safety Institutes held its first meeting in San Francisco. Its founding members were Australia, Canada, the EU, France, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Singapore, the UK and the US. A common misconception is that these institutes can block model releases. The UK and US bodies have no general statutory power to compel access or stop deployment. Their access comes from voluntary agreements, and their findings shape policy and company decisions without being binding. The EU AI Office is different: under the AI Act it can request information from providers of general-purpose AI models with systemic risk and enforce obligations on them.