Toward a transparent supply chain for AI

Behind the smartphone in your pocket, and nearly every other manufactured good, is something called a BOM — a bill of materials that breaks down the product’s parts and explains how it was made. A BOM serves as a manufacturing blueprint that can help businesses manage inventory, reduce waste, and improve supply chain efficiency.

Software products got their own bill of materials in the 2010s, with an initial focus on making open-source licensing requirements easier to follow. As malicious attacks grew more common, the scope of software BOMs (or SBOMs) expanded to include provenance and security vulnerabilities. Now, as AI takes over some traditional software roles, the SBOM is evolving again to bring more consistency and accountability to the fragmented way that foundation models and their off-shoot applications are currently documented.

Standards are still evolving, but an AIBOM at a high level provides a standardized, auditable record of the datasets, weights, and methodologies…