AI glossary · Advanced · AI security · MLOps & LLMOps
AI BOM
An AI BOM (AI Bill of Materials) is a complete list of the models, datasets, libraries, settings and other components in an AI system, including their versions and sources.
About this term
- Level
- Advanced · Specialist terms that need the inner workings
- Category
- Security & safety
- Fields
- AI security, MLOps & LLMOps
- Added
- 2026-10-09
How it works
An AI BOM extends the SBOM (Software Bill of Materials), a list of components used in software, to fit AI. In addition to the usual software list, it records AI-specific information such as which base model was used, what data it was fine-tuned on, the model version and license, and the evaluation results. It is usually created not as a human-readable document but in a defined machine-readable format, connected to automated checking tools. It also gathers in one place information scattered across model registries and dataset cards.
Why it matters
When news breaks that a public model or dataset has a problem, a company needs to quickly find which of its services use it. With an AI BOM, a simple search of the list can identify affected systems. It is also used to catch license violations or the use of data of unclear origin in advance. It can also serve as evidence for regulators and auditors explaining "what the AI was built from."
Things to know
The list is meaningful only if it matches reality. If it is not updated automatically every time a model is retrained or a library is changed, it quickly becomes outdated. Also, an AI BOM only tells you "what went in"; it does not guarantee that those ingredients are safe. Industry standards for the format and required fields are still being refined, so the scope may vary by organization.
Example
Suppose a team running an internal document search chatbot automatically generates and stores an AI BOM with each deployment. If a security issue is later disclosed in an embedding model or library they used, the security team can search the AI BOM to immediately find the services and versions containing that component and decide the order of replacement.