Model Card

A model card is a standardized documentation artifact for an AI model that describes its intended use cases, performance characteristics across demographic groups, training data sources, known limitations, and ethical considerations. Model cards were introduced by Google in 2018 and are now an emerging governance standard for both public and internal AI deployments.

Regulators and procurement teams increasingly require model cards for AI systems used in consequential decisions — hiring, lending, healthcare triage, and benefits eligibility. A model card is not a marketing document; it must disclose failure modes and out-of-distribution behavior even when that information is unflattering.