AI systems increasingly shape the lives of animals – in farming, research, wildlife management, and beyond – yet animals are largely absent from the frameworks now being written to govern AI. AIGAH is a civil-society policy initiative that wants to change that: building the evidence base, engaging policymakers, and connecting the people who can put animals on the AI governance agenda.
Mapping how AI systems affect animals and where existing and emerging regulation – from the EU AI Act to UK frameworks – leaves them out.
Translating research into concrete proposals for policymakers, advocates, regulators, and standards bodies in Brussels, London, and beyond.
Convening researchers, advocates, and technologists so that animal interests are represented wherever AI governance is decided.
The EU is the first jurisdiction whose AI-governance framework names non-human welfare: it appears in the GPAI Code of Practice as an example of systemic risk – named, but with no definition, no assessment method and no reporting expectation. The Code covers general-purpose AI models placed on the EU market, so its signatories include most of the leading AI developers, among them the major American labs. Whoever supplies the working definition shapes how those developers assess risks to animals, in Europe and everywhere their models are built. AIGAH's operational criteria work exists to supply it.
The UK pairs unusually strong animal-welfare machinery with an AI approach still taking shape. A statutory committee must consider animal sentience across all central-government policy – AI policy included – and the Animal Welfare Strategy for England (December 2025) commits to work on welfare codes and farmed-fish slaughter that AI deployment directly touches. That machinery has simply never been pointed at AI. AIGAH's UK work is about applying it there.
Both tracks serve one goal: welfare-relevant information from AI systems flowing outward (to regulators and the public, not only to operators) before today's defaults harden into tomorrow's standards.
In progress – expected late summer 2026
The GPAI Code of Practice names non-human welfare as an example of systemic risk, but offers no definition or assessment method. We are developing operational criteria to close that gap, for circulation ahead of the Code's first review in 2027.
In progress – expected October 2026
A systematic map of where EU and UK regulatory frameworks leave animals out of AI governance – around 30 intervention points, built as a shared resource for advocacy organisations.
Submitted July 2026
The EU AI Office consulted on draft guidelines for classifying high-risk AI systems under the AI Act. AI failures in animal contexts – such as automated climate control in livestock housing – fall squarely within the risks the guidelines address, yet the draft contains no livestock example. AIGAH submitted its own response by the 23 July deadline, alongside a published guide to responding within the consultation's scope. The final guidelines are expected end-2026.
Dr Henrike Gätjens
Hi, I'm Henrike. I founded AIGAH in 2026 to bring animals into the conversations and decisions happening now in AI governance. Before that, I did a PhD in the history of science, facilitated the Sentient Futures AI×Animals Fellowship, and helped Max Taylor with research for his forthcoming book AI, Animals, and Us (HarperOne, 2027). I'm based in Cambridge, UK.
Occasional updates on our research, policy work, and events.
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