---
title: "Lawful basis"
description: "One of the six grounds in GDPR Article 6 that make processing of personal data lawful: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task and legitimate interests."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/lawful-basis
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-25
---

# Lawful basis

One of the six grounds in GDPR Article 6 that make processing of personal data lawful: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task and legitimate interests [1]. For AI, each processing moment (training, retrieval, inference, logging) needs its own basis, recorded per dataset and stage.

- Developed in: [ch. 19, Lawful basis for training versus inference](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/privacy-and-ai#lawful-basis-for-training-versus-inference)
- Chapters: [ch. 19, Privacy & AI](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/privacy-and-ai)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-lawful-basis

## Sources

[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)