AIRiskAware
AI Governance Glossary
Governance Practice

What Is System Card?

System Card is a transparency document describing how a complete AI system behaves, including the model, its safeguards, evaluations, and known limitations.

Definition

System Carda transparency document describing how a complete AI system behaves, including the model, its safeguards, evaluations, and known limitations.

A system card is broader than a model card: where a model card documents a single model's characteristics, a system card describes the deployed system as a whole — including guardrails, content filters, human-oversight arrangements, and the results of safety evaluations and red-teaming. System cards have become a common voluntary disclosure for frontier AI deployments and support the transparency expectations in frameworks such as the NIST AI RMF and the EU AI Act.

Source: NIST AI RMF; Mitchell et al. (2019), Model Cards

Plain-language explanation

A system card is broader than a model card: where a model card documents a single model's characteristics, a system card describes the deployed system as a whole — including guardrails, content filters, human-oversight arrangements, and the results of safety evaluations and red-teaming. System cards have become a common voluntary disclosure for frontier AI deployments and support the transparency expectations in frameworks such as the NIST AI RMF and the EU AI Act.

Primary source: NIST AI RMF; Mitchell et al. (2019), Model Cards

See where you stand on AI governance

Take the free 7-question maturity assessment and get a personalised action plan.

Free assessment — 3 minutes →