Why We're Building Custom AI Agents for GRC in Person

Complyance hosted our inaugural GRC AI Labs in NYC. Next stop: a city near you.

Last month we ran the first GRC AI Labs in New York: an afternoon of 1:1 lab sessions where Enterprise GRC leaders sat down with our team and co-built a custom AI Agent around a real problem their team is facing today. To mark the first Lab, we closed the day with a happy hour for attendees and the wider practitioner community, with Troy Fine of Fine Assurance speaking on responsible AI in GRC and what it means for audit quality.

Inside the sessions

Attendees arrived with a mix (that will be familiar to anyone in this field) of skepticism earned from tools that overpromise or never quite fit the way they work, balanced with real curiosity about the possibilities and, above all, an eagerness to get their hands dirty and build.

In their slots, we took the process each attendee is currently struggling with and co-built an AI Agent to fix it, incorporating the nuances their team deals with every day: the workflow steps, the escalation thresholds, and of course, all the guardrails. Then we set the Agent live, and the GRC leader watched it at work. They could follow it through the workflow, watching escalation thresholds being met in real time, with reasoning visible so they could clearly trace its work, right through to the Agent delivering the outcome. In most cases, completing in minutes what takes their team hours today.

Once they'd seen their proof, attendees wanted to see more. Every session that day ran over, either because there was so much detail and nuance to discuss before building, or because we got carried away trying to build a second Agent. When things clicked, it bred an optimism that carried attendees through to the happy hour and beyond. Being in the room for that was fantastic!

The AI mandate, and the reality

But the optimism we saw after the sessions is scarcer than it should be, and the other conversations happening across the day and into the happy hour made it clear why.

We heard it over and over in NYC: boards are encouraging, if not mandating, internal AI use. Teams are told by leaders and peers alike of the transformative power of AI and how it's being proven already in other industries. But then they live a different reality day to day: AI bolted onto tools it wasn't designed for, reviews that seem fast until you're validating the output for hallucinations three times, files downloaded, re-uploaded, and transferred across the tool stack to see any benefit. In some cases, the AI mandate is actually adding more work to their plate.

Why we're holding GRC AI Labs

That's exactly why we started the Labs: to have Enterprise GRC leaders bring us their biggest problems and to solve them with AI right in front of them.

We wanted to co-build live with them to be sure they could really see the solution to their problem, which is why we run labs, not in-person demos. Leaders build in their specific nuances and their specific workflow steps, work they know inside out, so the power of AI is felt, not just something they're told about.

We know adoption of new technologies like AI can't and won't come until the benefits are seen and felt, and proven over and over again. For GRC practitioners specifically, AI has to meet their high standards before they can trust it: AI that is built around the nuances and scale Enterprises operate at, powerful but with strict guardrails and governance, and effective enough that they can step back from the manual processes they've relied on for years. The Labs are the starting point, and we're excited to be continuing them.

Coming to a city near you

New York was just the first stop. GRC AI Labs are heading across the US city by city, and the format stays the same everywhere: come with a problem, leave with an Agent, and see first-hand what AI really changes for you.