AI Governance Engineer
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AI incident

By Updated

In the OECD's definition, an event or series of events where the development, use or malfunction of one or more AI systems directly or indirectly leads to harm to health, critical infrastructure, human or fundamental rights, property, communities or the environment 1.

Developed in
ch. 17, Incident, hazard, issue and serious incident
Chapters
ch. 17, Incidents
Contrast with
Issue (versus incident) · AI hazard · Serious incident
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Commonly confused

  • AI incident versus Issue (versus incident)

    AI incident
    In the OECD's definition, an event or series of events where the development, use or malfunction of one or more AI systems directly or indirectly leads to harm to health, critical infrastructure…
    Issue (versus incident)
    A defect, deviation or control weakness that has not produced a harmful event, such as an eval regression in staging or a drift alert.

    The differenceHarm has happened, against a defect or deviation that has not produced a harmful event.

    Why it mattersIncidents start reporting clocks and CAPA; issues go to a tracked backlog with an owner and a due date.

Where it is used

6 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Patterns that use this term

One pattern page uses the term.

  • Near miss

    A hazard that a control, or luck, interrupted before harm occurred: the guardrail blocked the exfiltration, the reviewer caught the invented dosage.

  • Widespread infringement

    Under AI Act Article 3(61), an act or omission contrary to Union law protecting individuals' interests that harms, or is likely to harm, the collective…

  • AI system

    For governance, the object the AI definition brings into scope.

Sources

  1. [1] "Name it to tame it: defining AI incidents and hazards" (summary of the OECD paper "Defining AI incidents and related terms", doi 10.1787/d1a8d965-en). OECD.AI. 2024-05-17. https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/defining-ai-incidents-and-hazards (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). AI incident. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/ai-incident. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026aiincident,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{AI incident}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/ai-incident}
}