NDT Week 2026 Brought AI Standards Development to Miami — What It Means for Inspection Programs

In January, ASNT, ASTM International, and the American Welding Society convened at AWS headquarters in Miami for NDT Week 2026 — the first time the three organizations have run a joint event. More than 150 technical experts and committee members from all three groups spent four days working through where inspection technology is headed, and artificial intelligence sat at the center of nearly every session.

The headline topic: standardizing AI in NDT. ASNT has been developing a new standard, Use of AI/ML for NDT/E Applications, that sets minimum requirements for developing, validating, deploying, and maintaining artificial intelligence and machine learning tools used in nondestructive testing and evaluation. The standard has already been through public comment, and committees from ASNT, ASTM E07, and AWS met in Miami specifically to align on how AI-assisted inspection fits into existing frameworks rather than operating as a parallel, unregulated track.

Why this is a bigger deal than it sounds. AI-assisted defect recognition — software that flags likely indications in ultrasonic, radiographic, or eddy current data for a qualified inspector to confirm — is already in use at some shops, largely without a formal standard governing how it should be validated or documented. A published standard changes that: it gives auditors, customers, and inspectors themselves a common reference for what "properly validated AI-assisted NDT" actually means, the same way SNT-TC-1A and NAS 410 standardized personnel qualification decades ago.

What it means if you haven't touched AI-assisted inspection yet. Nothing changes for your current inspection program today — this standard is still working through development, not a new regulatory requirement. But it's a strong signal that AI-assisted inspection tools are moving from novelty to a standardized, auditable part of the NDT toolkit, and shops that wait until adoption is mandatory will have less runway to build the validation documentation a future standard is likely to require.

Lion NDT keeps an eye on standards development like this so our Level III support and procedure development stay ahead of where the industry is actually heading, not just where it's been. If you're evaluating AI-assisted inspection tools and want help thinking through how validation and documentation would need to work, that's a conversation worth having early.