What does trust and transparency look like in the era of AI?

In a market where AI adoption is accelerating faster than regulation, trust has quietly become one of the strongest competitive advantages a company can build. Every organization deploying AI today faces a dual imperative: keep innovating while staying accountable to customers, regulators, and society.

The companies that win won’t just launch better models — they’ll earn and sustain trust in how those models operate, make decisions, and evolve over time.

This was the central thread of a conversation between Dr. Carolin Gütschow, Director of Legal at Parloa, and Dr. Philipp Hacker, Chair for Law & Ethics of the Digital Society at European New School of Digital Studies, at WAVE 2025. Together, they unpacked why governance that keeps pace with AI isn’t just about compliance, it’s a strategic lever for innovation and sustainable growth.

Compliance that fuels innovation

Regulation is often framed as a brake pedal on innovation. But forward-looking companies see it differently: governance can be the engine that enables responsible, scalable innovation.

“When we develop new features, we ask ourselves two simple questions: Does it work technically? And is it transparent and trustworthy?” said Gütschow.

That mindset turns compliance from a post-production checklist into a design principle. Parloa’s governance framework is built around three pillars: product integrity, third-party AI evaluation, and AI literacy across the company. Every product decision is made with accountability in mind, a critical advantage in sectors like finance, insurance, and telecommunications, where trust is not optional.

As trust becomes a competitive battleground, governance is emerging as a product feature in its own right — one that strengthens reputation, accelerates adoption, and fuels growth.

Turning the AI Act into an opportunity

For many organizations, the EU AI Act is perceived as a burden. But Hacker argues it can be turned into a strategic differentiator. “You can brand your product as AI Act compliant,” he explained. “That’s a very positive label not just in the EU, but in other jurisdictions increasingly adopting similar frameworks.”

This flips the script: compliance isn’t just risk mitigation, it’s market positioning. Companies that meet or exceed emerging standards signal reliability, foresight, and operational maturity to their customers and partners.

Of course, the details matter. Even minor changes to how companies fine-tune or adapt general-purpose models can shift their regulatory classification under the AI Act. But organizations that invest early in adaptive governance will be better prepared to manage these shifts seamlessly.

In short: compliance can be a competitive moat.

Global regulation is more complex than it looks

The regulatory landscape is evolving unevenly, but not necessarily more leniently, across geographies. Hacker pointed out that while Europe has a unified framework like the AI Act, the U.S. operates with a patchwork of state laws, liability rules, and copyright enforcement, often making it equally complex to navigate.

This underscores a critical truth: AI governance isn’t just legal, it’s operational. Companies can’t simply “choose a friendlier jurisdiction.” They need frameworks that scale across regions and adapt quickly to new obligations.

Parloa has an advantage here. Built on a foundation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, its governance principles — transparency, accountability, and user rights — extend naturally into AI regulation. This positions the company to respond quickly to both European and North American regulatory developments.

The result: a governance strategy that is globally adaptive, locally compliant, and structurally resilient.

Transparency is the trust multiplier

Transparency isn’t a legal box to tick — it’s the most visible signal of trustworthiness. Under the AI Act, users must be informed when they interact with AI, and by August 2026, providers will need to ensure outputs from generative models are clearly identifiable as AI-generated.

But Parloa doesn’t view this as a compliance exercise. It sees transparency as an opportunity to build clarity into the customer experience itself. When users understand how AI decisions are made and trust how their data is handled, adoption accelerates.

Transparency becomes a flywheel for trust, amplifying customer confidence and long-term loyalty.

For enterprises deploying AI in customer-facing environments, this clarity can become a core differentiator.

Future-proofing governance for what’s next

Regulation will keep shifting. Technology will, too. That’s why both Gütschow and Hacker emphasize technology-neutral governance, systems built on enduring principles like fairness, accountability, and transparency, not tied to specific model architectures.

This future-proofing matters as AI systems evolve from static predictive models to autonomous agents, and as industries like healthcare and finance face sector-specific rules. The companies that thrive will be those that can adapt without rebuilding from scratch every time the regulatory landscape changes.

Good governance isn’t a constraint on innovation. It’s what enables innovation to endure.

Why trust is the real competitive edge

Trust is no longer a soft concept. It’s measurable. Defensible. Monetizable. In an era where AI systems can make or break relationships with customers and regulators, the companies that operationalize trust will shape the market.

Those who view governance as an accelerator, not a barrier, will move faster — onboarding customers more smoothly, expanding globally with fewer setbacks, and withstanding scrutiny others can’t.

As Hacker summarized: “The companies that build ethical, explainable, and transparent AI today will be the ones defining what good AI looks like tomorrow.”

The lesson is clear: governance is no longer a side function. It’s a growth strategy. And in the age of AI, trust isn’t just the differentiator, it’s the deciding factor.