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Widespread infringement

By Updated

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 interests of individuals across several Member States. It shortens the Article 73 serious-incident deadline to two days 1.

Developed in
ch. 17, Incident, hazard, issue and serious incident
Chapters
ch. 17, Incidents
Contrast with
Serious incident
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

4 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.

  • AI hazard

    In the OECD's definition, an event or series of events where the development, use or malfunction of an AI system could plausibly lead to an AI 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…

  • 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.

  • Near miss

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

  • AI Act (EU)

    Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU's horizontal, risk-tiered law for AI, amended by the Digital Omnibus.

Sources

  1. [1] Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act), consolidated text as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI, in force 27 Jul 2026; definitions in Art. 3, incl. 3(1), 3(3) to 3(14), 3(14b), 3(20), 3(22), 3(23), 3(29) to 3(32), 3(49), 3(55) to 3(57), 3(60), 3(61), 3(63), 3(68); Arts. 4, 5, 6 (incl. 6(3) third subparagraph, profiling), 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22 to 27 (incl. 26(11)), 40, 41, 43, 47, 48, 50, 53 (incl. 53(1)(c)), 55, 57, 60, 72, 73, 86; Annexes I, III, IV). Publications Office of the EU (EUR-Lex). 2026-07-27. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/2026-07-27/eng (verified: primary)

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

Cite this term

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

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026widespreadinfringement,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Widespread infringement}},
  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/widespread-infringement}
}