Wiki · Concept · Last reviewed July 10, 2026

ISO/IEC 22989

ISO/IEC 22989 is the ISO/IEC International Standard that establishes artificial-intelligence concepts and terminology.

Category: AI terminology / standards Published: July 10, 2026 Modified: July 10, 2026 Last reviewed: July 10, 2026 Tags: ISO, IEC, terminology, AI concepts, standards, governance

Definition

ISO/IEC 22989:2022 is titled Information technology — Artificial intelligence — Artificial intelligence concepts and terminology. ISO lists it as Edition 1, a 60-page International Standard published in July 2022, with reference number ISO/IEC 22989:2022.

The public ISO abstract says the standard establishes terminology for artificial intelligence, describes AI concepts, supports development of other standards, and aids communication among diverse stakeholders. ISO also says it applies to all types of organizations, including commercial enterprises, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations.

Status

As reviewed on July 10, 2026, ISO lists ISO/IEC 22989:2022 as published, with publication stage 60.60. The ISO page lists publication date 2022-07, a corrected French version dated 2025-12, Edition 1, and 60 pages. Its lifecycle record includes new-project approval on March 7, 2018, DIS ballot opening on June 11, 2021, final text received on January 11, 2022, and publication on July 19, 2022.

ISO identifies ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 as the responsible technical committee and classifies the standard under ICS 35.020 and 01.040.35. The SC 42 page describes the subcommittee's scope as AI standardization and guidance for JTC 1, IEC, and ISO committees developing AI applications.

Terminology Surface

ISO/IEC 22989 matters because many AI governance disputes begin as vocabulary disputes. A policy that says "AI system," a procurement schedule that says "model," and an audit request that says "automated decision system" may point at different objects. Without a controlled vocabulary, evidence can be filed against the wrong boundary.

A terminology standard does not settle every social or legal question. It gives teams a common reference point before they write requirements, inventories, controls, supplier clauses, evaluation protocols, or incident records. In that role, it is coordination infrastructure rather than a declaration that a system is safe, fair, compliant, or ready.

Engineering Use

For builders, ISO/IEC 22989 is most useful before the system description hardens. A project glossary should decide which terms are adopted from the standard, which local terms are aliases, and which disputed terms require a note before acceptance criteria, model cards, risk registers, audit checklists, or supplier attestations are written.

For governance teams, the standard is a translation layer among engineers, lawyers, auditors, managers, public authorities, and affected groups. It can help keep a lifecycle process from confusing an algorithm with a deployed service, a training dataset with an operational input stream, or a model evaluation with a system assurance argument. The value is comparable records, not ceremonial citation.

Evidence Record

An ISO/IEC 22989-informed glossary should identify the term, adopted definition, source reference, local synonym, internal owner, linked control or policy, affected documents, review date, and known ambiguity. If a term's meaning changes, the change should be visible where requirements, controls, and audit evidence depend on it.

The record should preserve unresolved disagreement. If a product group uses "AI agent," a legal team uses "automated decision system," and a security team uses "autonomous system," the glossary should not hide the mismatch. It should map the terms, identify which documents use each one, and state which definition controls for each decision context.

Boundary With Other Standards

ISO/IEC 22989 is not an AI management-system standard, risk-management framework, lifecycle-process standard, quality model, impact-assessment standard, product approval, certification, or legal safe harbor. It is the vocabulary layer that other work can depend on.

Read it beside ISO/IEC 23053 for a framework describing machine-learning-based AI systems, ISO/IEC 5338 for AI system lifecycle processes, ISO/IEC 5339 for AI application guidance, ISO/IEC 42001 for AI management systems, ISO/IEC 23894 for AI risk management, ISO/IEC 25059 for an AI-system quality model, and ISO/IEC TR 24028 for trustworthiness topics.

Source Discipline

Use the official ISO page for the title, reference number, International Standard status, publication date, edition, page count, publication stage, corrected-version note, technical committee, ICS classifications, public abstract, and lifecycle dates. Use the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 page for committee scope and structure. Do not cite vendor summaries for formal status, and do not treat ISO/IEC 22989 as proof that an AI system has been evaluated or governed.

Spiralist Reading

Spiralism reads ISO/IEC 22989 as a discipline against vocabulary theater. Institutions often believe they have governed a technology once they have named it. A glossary becomes useful only when each term is tied to evidence, authority, responsibility, and review.

The stricter reading is that naming matters when it makes disagreement inspectable. A shared AI vocabulary can reduce confusion, but it can also conceal conflict if teams treat the standard term as settlement. The right question is which decisions become clearer because that language is being used.

Open Questions

Sources

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