AEF-1 Standard
AEF-1: Minimum Operating Conditions for Independent Third Party AI Evaluations
Version 1, updated December 4, 2025
Independent third-party evaluations of AI systems are becoming increasingly central to AI governance approaches pursued by developers, governments, enterprises, and the public. However, the operating conditions of third-party evaluations can be opaque, even though they can significantly impact whether an evaluation is trustworthy and impartial. To address this, we present AEF-1, a standard and checklist that third-party evaluators can use to demonstrate how they achieved a set of operating conditions that support a baseline level of independence, access, and transparency during an evaluation.
The success of AEF-1 requires adoption by a range of stakeholders, including frontier developers.
AEF-1 in practice
Evaluations by Forum members carried out or documented under the conditions the standard describes.
Mental Health Evaluation
Transluce · August 2026
An independent assessment of how 77 model variants respond to users experiencing mental health crises, published with a detailed disclosure of operating conditions consistent with AEF-1.
How AEF-1 was used: Included the AEF-1 checklist, disclosing the broader operating conditions the evaluation ran under and what may have affected its independence, access, and transparency.
Frontier Risk Report
METR · May 2026
An assessment of misalignment risk from AI agents deployed internally at Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI, carried out with more direct access to non-public information and more editorial independence than previous external evaluation engagements.
How AEF-1 was used: Included the AEF-1 reporting checklist in the published report.
Biosecurity pre-release assessment
SecureBio · September 2026
Independent pre-release assessment of biosecurity-relevant capabilities in OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, including knowledge and agentic benchmarks, safeguard refusals, and expert red-teaming.
How AEF-1 was used: Included the AEF-1 checklist in the published report, and uses AEF-1 as a foundation of its organizational principles.
Independence provisions under the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice
European AI Office
The EU AI Office has endorsed key provisions of the AEF-1 standard as a means for providers to comply with the independence provisions of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice.
What the standard covers
Sufficient Access and Resources
Technical access · Information · Computational resources · Time · Safe harbor
Minimized Conflicts of Interest
Contingent compensation · Organizational control · CoI policy · CoI disclosure · Recusals · Separate agreements
Analytic Autonomy
Scoping · Evaluation autonomy · Direct access · Editorial control
Transparent Methods and Results
Methodological transparency · Disclosure rights · No contingent release · No misrepresentation · Timely disclosure · Redactions · Redaction disclaimer
Protection of Sensitive Information
Publication terms · Evaluation integrity · Protecting confidential information · Responsible disclosure policy