National AI Centre launches AI.gov.au platform for safe AI adoption

The National AI Centre on Friday launched AI.gov.au, a federal platform consolidating AI guidance, tools and case studies into one site aimed at small and medium businesses and the not-for-profit sector. The platform sits under the National AI Plan and is run by the National AI Centre, a branch of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources in Canberra.

The Department of Industry described the site as “the Australian Government’s front door for artificial intelligence” in a LinkedIn post on Friday morning. The platform, the Department said, would help organisations “understand, plan for and responsibly adopt AI”.

What sits on the site at launch

The first release of AI.gov.au consolidates resources that had been scattered across several federal websites. The site lists guidance for AI adoption, guidance on disclosing AI-generated content, an AI skills for business course catalogue, an AI event calendar, a directory of Australian businesses working in AI, the latest Australian artificial intelligence ecosystem report, and an AI Adoption Tracker.

The National AI Centre said the site would help organisations understand where AI can add value, plan how to use it, support staff through the change, and weigh risks before extending the technology across a business.

The platform also positions itself as a delivery channel for the AI Safety Institute, the federal body set up to study frontier model risks. The Department said AI.gov.au would “make safety guidance easier for SMEs to understand and use”.

Existing AI Safety Institute outputs, such as model evaluation methodologies and frontier-risk assessments, are written for technical audiences. Translating those into plain-English checklists for a 12-person accounting firm or a regional charity has been a missing piece of the federal AI policy stack. The Department signalled AI.gov.au is where that translation work will sit.

How the platform was built

The first release was shaped by user research and engagement with industry and government, including work through the SaaM AI Adopt Centre, the public-private body that runs hands-on AI uptake programmes for Australian companies. That research, the Department said, helped clarify what organisations need most when starting out: where to begin in strategy and planning, how to engage staff, and what risks to weigh when extending AI into more parts of a business.

The focus on SMEs is deliberate. Larger enterprises typically have internal AI governance teams, vendor lawyers and procurement processes already running. Smaller organisations, which now make up the bulk of new generative AI adopters, often do not. The Department said the National AI Centre will continue to add guidance, tools and resources over time based on ongoing research and user feedback.

The AI Adoption Tracker, one of the resources rolled into the launch, is the National AI Centre’s running snapshot of how Australian organisations are using AI, drawn from surveys and case studies. The accompanying ecosystem report covers vendors, applications and capacity by sector. Both were previously hosted on industry.gov.au under separate URLs. Consolidation should make the baseline datasets easier to find for businesses scoping a first AI project, the Department said.

The wider policy backdrop

AI.gov.au lands in a busy week for Australian AI policy. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Friday separately called for urgent cyber uplift across financial-sector licensees, citing risks from frontier AI models such as Mythos. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority earlier in the week wrote to mortgage brokers about AI-driven fraud detection and the consumer protections required when banks deploy fraud agents at scale, which digitalblog covered when APRA flagged the CBA fraud-detection rollout.

The launch comes roughly twelve months after the federal government announced the National AI Plan, the umbrella programme AI.gov.au is delivered under. Industry House in Canberra confirmed that further releases will roll out over coming months, with content tailored to specific sectors and risk profiles.

For SMEs, the open question is whether a single federal portal will lift adoption when the binding constraint is often staff time and skills, not where to find guidance. The site’s launch lineup of skills courses, case studies and the AU AI vendor directory is pitched at that gap. The AI Adoption Tracker will register over the next year whether organisations actually use the resources.

The platform is live at ai.gov.au. The National AI Centre said feedback gathered through the site would shape what is added next, and pointed users to the NAIC newsletter and its LinkedIn account for updates. Industry House said the team behind the rollout would also publish quarterly check-ins on which guidance is most used and where SMEs are still asking for more.

Sources

Reporting drew on the Department of Industry, Science and Resources launch announcement, the Mirage News writeup, the Department of Industry LinkedIn post, and the ASIC 26-092MR release.