The Affirmative Defense Under Colorado's AI Act: Your Legal Shield

Section 6-1-1005 of Colorado's AI Act creates something unprecedented in AI regulation: a rebuttable presumption of compliance for organizations that follow recognized governance frameworks.

In plain language: if you can prove you followed NIST AI RMF or ISO 42001 in good faith, the law presumes you're compliant. The Attorney General must then prove otherwise — a significantly higher bar than making you prove compliance from scratch.

This isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's a procedural advantage that rewards organizations who invest in genuine AI governance.

Building a legally defensible affirmative defense requires four documented pillars:

Pillar 1: Framework Alignment
Your AI governance program must map to a recognized framework. NIST AI RMF 1.0 is the strongest choice for U.S. organizations — it's government-authored, freely available, and explicitly referenced in the statute. ISO 42001 is the international alternative.

Pillar 2: Operational Evidence
Alignment on paper isn't enough. You need evidence that you're actually following the framework: regular bias audits, completed impact assessments, functioning incident response, and real consumer disclosures.

Pillar 3: Continuous Monitoring
A one-time compliance effort won't hold up. The defense requires ongoing monitoring — monthly or quarterly bias audits, annual impact assessments updated when systems change, and real-time incident detection.

Pillar 4: Good-Faith Remediation
When issues are found (and they will be), your response matters. Documented cure procedures — identifying the problem, implementing a fix, verifying the fix worked — demonstrate good faith that strengthens your defense.

The NIST AI Risk Management Framework organizes AI governance into four functions:

• GOVERN — Policies, roles, accountability structures, and culture
• MAP — Identifying and classifying AI systems, intended uses, and affected stakeholders
• MEASURE — Quantitative and qualitative assessment of AI risks, including bias testing
• MANAGE — Risk treatment, incident response, and continuous improvement

Each function has specific subcategories with actionable requirements. CO-AIMS maps its compliance modules directly to these functions — your system registry is MAP, bias audits are MEASURE, remediation plans are MANAGE, and your governance dashboard is GOVERN.

The affirmative defense lives or dies on documentation quality. What the AG looks for:

• Timestamps — Every audit, assessment, and disclosure must be dated. "We did this last year" without a date is worthless.
• Methodology — Bias audits must document the statistical methodology used, the data analyzed, and the thresholds applied.
• Completeness — Gaps in your record destroy the defense. If you audited 8 of 10 systems, the 2 unaudited systems are your vulnerability.
• Remediation trail — When audits find issues, the fix must be documented: what was found, what was changed, and evidence the change worked.

This is precisely why CO-AIMS generates evidence bundles — aggregating every record into a structured, court-ready document with complete audit trails. When your attorney needs to demonstrate compliance, it's a single PDF, not a frantic scramble through email threads and spreadsheets.