# Deployers must ensure input data they control is relevant and representative

- **Record type**: Obligation
- **Instrument**: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — Artificial Intelligence Act
- **Jurisdiction**: European Union
- **Category**: data_governance
- **Binding**: Yes
- **Applies from**: 2026-08-02
- **Provision**: Article 26(4)

## What the duty requires

To the extent a deployer controls the data fed into a high-risk AI system, it must make sure that input data is relevant to, and sufficiently representative for, the system's intended purpose. The duty sits with the deployer even though the provider designed the system, because the deployer chooses what the system is run on.

## What an organisation does about it

Define input-data quality checks for each high-risk system, including population coverage and field validation, and review them with the provider's instructions.

## Controls that meet this duty

- Data governance and dataset documentation (satisfies): https://aipolicytracker.org/controls/data-governance-and-dataset-documentation
- Post-deployment monitoring and drift detection (supports): https://aipolicytracker.org/controls/post-market-monitoring-and-drift-detection

## Parent instrument

- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — Artificial Intelligence Act
  - Record: https://aipolicytracker.org/policies/eu-ai-act
  - Context file: https://aipolicytracker.org/policies/eu-ai-act.md

## Provenance

- **Record page**: https://aipolicytracker.org/obligations/eu-ai-act-art-26-4-deployer-input-data
- **Official source**: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj
- **Provision**: Article 26(4)
- **Review status**: pending review
- **Confidence**: high
- **Facts last confirmed**: never confirmed against the official source
- **Retrieved**: 2026-09-24
- **Licence**: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

> This record is a structured summary with a link to the official text. It is not legal advice. Open the official source before relying on any date or duty. How current each record type must be is published at https://aipolicytracker.org/verification; what a record must carry at all is published at https://aipolicytracker.org/coverage.