The free-to-use AI Policy Wizard comes from Darwin, a startup that recently raised $5 million.
The company focuses on AI adoption, governance and compliance for public agencies, and its new tool will help officials craft “practical, compliant, and customized AI policies from the ground up,” according to a statement from Darwin.
The tool’s debut comes as AI gains more attention from lawmakers at all levels, including U.S. House Republicans who want to ban states from regulating it for a decade, state officials calling for more AI governance, and cities and counties trying to keep up with changes, laws and compliance challenges.
As Darwin CEO Noam Maital said he sees it, agencies tend to face two choices when it comes to AI: Starting from scratch or using generic templates.
The AI Policy Wizard will expand those options, he told Government Technology.
“What’s been missing is a streamlined way to create a customized AI policy — one that is both grounded in leading frameworks and adaptable to the local context,” he said via email.
Officials can use the tool “to set their risk tolerance, choose relevant frameworks, and input local considerations,” he said. (Frameworks refers to guidelines from such organizations as the National Institute of Standards and Technology or the GovAI Coalition.)
Within minutes, the AI Policy Wizard can generate what Maital called “a tailored, regulation-aware policy that would otherwise take months to develop. The result is a policy that’s not just theoretically sound, but also implementable and aligned with the city or agency’s actual operating environment.”
He offered an example of how the tool might work in a city with 150 workers, no dedicated data team and a limited consulting budget. Previously, he said, that city would ask an “overstretched staffer with no AI background” to buy an off-the-shelf AI template that does not reflect local policies or regulations.
“With the Policy Wizard, that city can log in, answer a few guided prompts, select their risk posture, reference relevant frameworks, and generate a tailored AI policy,” he said.
Darwin already has clients in such states as California and Illinois, where city officials are using the company’s technology to deploy AI in a strategic manner while making sure those tools comply with their own local policies.
The no-fee Policy Wizard lowers the barrier to entry for public agencies interested in doing more with AI, Maital said.
“The Policy Wizard is free because we consistently hear from agencies that this early step — creating or updating an AI policy — is a major gap,” he said. “If the Policy Wizard helps shift thinking from ‘what’s our AI policy’ to ‘how do we make this policy real in our systems and workflows,’ then it’s done its job.”
