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Contestability

By Updated

The ability of a person affected by an AI-supported decision to challenge it and obtain a response that can change it. GDPR Article 22(3) gives a right to contest solely automated decisions 1, and the OECD principles ask that people adversely affected can challenge an output 2.

Developed in
ch. 16, The legal hooks for explanations
ch. 05, Pattern: Decision Notice & Contest Path
Chapters
ch. 05, Patterns · ch. 12, Governance Program · ch. 16, Fairness & XAI
Contrast with
Recourse · Contest path
Source
2 numbered references, listed below

Where it is used

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

  • Decision notice

    The notice a person receives at the point of an automated or AI-assisted decision, rendered from a versioned template and the decision record: that a system…

  • Reason code

    A stable, human-readable statement of a principal factor behind an adverse decision, mapped from the factors the model actually scored and versioned with the…

Sources

  1. [1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) (Arts. 4(1), 4(5), 4(7), 4(8), 4(12), 4(14), 5, 6, 9, 12(3), 22, 25, 28(2) and 28(4), 30, 33, 35; Recital 26). Publications Office of the EU (EUR-Lex). 2016-04-27. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng (verified: primary)
  2. [2] Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence, OECD/LEGAL/0449 (adopted 22 May 2019; AI-system definition revised 8 Nov 2023; revised 3 May 2024; five principles and five recommendations; 1.3 enables people adversely affected to challenge an output; definitions of AI system, lifecycle and AI actors). OECD. 2024-05-03. https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0449 (verified: primary)

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

Cite this term

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

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026contestability,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Contestability}},
  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/contestability}
}