EU AI Act Art. 12: record-keeping and logging

Record-keeping: automatic logging of events over the system's lifetime

By Jorge García Aibar Reviewed 2026-09-24

From clause to evidence Build the artefact, then file every output it produces as a record that names AIGE-OBL-EUAIA-ART12. Drawn from chapter 08.

Text alternative

Clause: EU AI Act, Art. 12.
Duty holder: Provider.
Applies from: 2027-12-02, Deferred.
Artefact: Structured, signed logs.
Layer: Layer 04 Runtime Controls & Observability.
Evidence record: Evidence record, +3 more.
Record schemas: Evidence record , Control observation , Agent register entry , Design record .
The same topic in 11 other frameworks; the crosswalk section below links each clause.

Id

AIGE-OBL-EUAIA-ART12

Instrument

EU AI Act (post-Omnibus) law

Compared side by side

ISO 42001 vs EU AI Act · NIST AI RMF vs EU AI Act

Clause

Art. 12

Duty holder

Provider

Authority

National MSA

Applies from

2027-12-02 Deferred · Annex III

Later dates

2028-08-02 Applies to Annex I embedded (product safety-component) systems
2030-08-02 Deadline for legacy high-risk systems intended for use by public authorities (Art. 111(2))

System class

High-risk (Annex III) · High-risk (Annex I)

The artefact that evidences it

Structured, signed logs; OpenTelemetry traces; tamper-evident event store.

L4 Runtime Controls & Observability

Patterns that build it

Machine-Readable Evidence (OSCAL) (layer 5)
Agent Identity & Scoped Credentials (layer 4)

The same topic in other frameworks

From the topic crosswalk: the clauses filed under the same topics as this one. Mappings are illustrative, not a claim of conformity.

Logging and traceability

ISO 42001 A.6 AI system life cycle (core)
TC260 Framework 3.0 TC260 App. 2 II.6 Continuous monitoring and auditing (core)
TC260 Framework 3.0 TC260 5.3.6 Logs kept and audited (core)
EU AI Act Art. 26(6) Deployers keep the automatically generated logs (core)
ISO 42001 A.6.2.8 AI system recording of event logs (core) (clause not verified)
CSA AICM LOG-09 Log Records (core)
Korea AI Act Art. 34(1)(5) Documents showing the measures taken (core)
OECD AI Principles OECD 1.5(b) Traceability of datasets, processes and decisions (core)
prEN 18229-1 prEN 18229-1 AI trustworthiness framework, Part 1: logging (draft; supports Art. 12) (core) (clause not verified)
GAO AI Accountability 4.3 Traceability: document results of monitoring activities and any corrective actions taken (core)
EU AI Act Art. 26 Obligations of deployers of high-risk AI systems
NIST AI RMF MANAGE 4 MANAGE 4: Risk treatments, including response and recovery, and communication plans for the identified and measured AI risks are documented and monitored
NIST AI RMF MEASURE 3 MEASURE 3: Mechanisms for tracking identified AI risks over time are in place
China AI Labelling Label Art. 5 Implicit metadata labels
EU AI Act Art. 19 Automatically generated logs
CSA AICM LOG-12 Transaction/Activity Logging
Singapore Agentic Agentic 2.3.3 When deploying, continuously monitor and test

Open controls that evidence it

Draft controls in the open control profiles that map to this row: each states a requirement and the evidence it must leave behind.

AIGE-CTL-EVAL-005 Monitoring Integrity (Evaluation environment profile)
AIGE-CTL-EVAL-007 Incident Evidence Preservation (Evaluation environment profile)
AIGE-CTL-AGENT-023 Memory write gate and rollback (Agent runtime profile)
AIGE-CTL-ASSURE-004 Common Signed Evidence Record (Assurance and evidence profile)
AIGE-CTL-ASSURE-006 Control Observations Filed Against Control Ids (Assurance and evidence profile)
AIGE-CTL-ASSURE-007 Machine-Readable Evidence in OSCAL (Assurance and evidence profile)
AIGE-CTL-ASSURE-008 Evidence Retention as Code (Assurance and evidence profile)

Source

Chapter 08, section EU AI Act, post-Omnibus, checked against its sources on the review date above.

Machine-readable

This obligation: /api/v1/obligations/aige-obl-euaia-art12.json
The register: /api/v1/obligations.json · CSV
Schema and stability promise: open data and API

Cite this obligation

García Aibar, J. (2026). EU AI Act Art. 12: record-keeping and logging (AIGE-OBL-EUAIA-ART12). In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/obligations/aige-obl-euaia-art12. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026obligation,
  author       = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title        = {{EU AI Act Art. 12: record-keeping and logging (AIGE-OBL-EUAIA-ART12)}},
  howpublished = {In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {0.5.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url          = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/obligations/aige-obl-euaia-art12},
  note         = {Version 0.5.0}
}