None of them defines what makes a record believable.
Below is each instrument, its date, and the operative text quoted from the primary source — followed by what that text does not say. The omissions are not oversights. They are the same omission, four times.
Note what is absent. Article 3 defines neither “self-evolving behaviour” nor “machine learning” nor “artificial intelligence” nor “autonomy.” These terms carry legal weight in the Annexes while remaining undefined in the instrument that uses them.
The Regulation says the recording is enabled and the data is retained, and stops. There is no standard for tamper-evidence, no requirement that the record be complete, no declared scope, and no method by which an authority — or a claimant, or an insurer — could establish that what was produced is what was recorded.
The party holding the record is the party whose conformity it evidences. Nothing in the instrument addresses that.
A statutory duty to record your machine’s safety decisions, two retention clocks, and a production obligation on reasoned request — with no defined way to show that what you hand over is complete or unaltered.
| Ceiling | For |
|---|---|
| €35,000,000 or 7% of worldwide turnover | Prohibited AI practices under Article 5 |
| €15,000,000 or 3% | Breach of operator obligations, including Articles 16, 26 and 50 — the tier Article 12’s record-keeping sits under |
| €7,500,000 or 1% | “The supply of incorrect, incomplete or misleading information to notified bodies or national competent authorities in reply to a request” |
It is a penalty aimed squarely at producing an incomplete or misleading record for a regulator. The failure has been priced in statute before anyone has defined how to avoid it.
Article 12 requires that events be recorded. It does not say the log must be tamper-evident. It does not say it must be complete, or define what complete would mean. It requires no declared scope, so a produced log cannot be distinguished from a partial one. It provides for verification by no one outside the company holding it.
A logging duty satisfied, on paper, by a file your own administrator can edit.
| State | Instrument | Effective | Private right of action |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | GBL Art. 47, §§ 1700–1704 | 5 Nov 2025 | No — Attorney General only, up to $15,000 per day |
| California | Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 22601–22606 (SB 243) | 1 Jan 2026 | Yes — $1,000 per violation |
| Washington | HB 2225, ch. 168, Laws of 2026 | 1 Jan 2027 | No express action; per se Consumer Protection Act violation |
| Oregon | Or. Laws 2026, ch. 85 (SB 1546) | 1 Jan 2027 | Yes — $1,000 per violation |
| Idaho | Idaho Code §§ 48-2101–2105 (SB 1297) | 1 Jul 2027 | Expressly none — $1,000 per violation, $500,000 cap |
| Nebraska | LB 525, §§ 12–18 | 1 Jul 2027 | Expressly none — $1,000 to $500,000 |
No log. No receipt. No timestamp. No retention period. No per-user or per-session documentation of any kind. Every one of these statutes mandates the act of disclosure and is silent on evidencing it.
The only record-adjacent duties in the entire set are three annual aggregate crisis-referral reports — California from July 2027, Oregon, and Washington. They count suicide and self-harm referrals. None of them records an AI-identity disclosure.
In California and Oregon, statutory damages of $1,000 per violation and a private right of action — against a claim that turns entirely on what you can show about a conversation your machine had, with no statute anywhere telling you to keep it.
The rules that produced more than two billion dollars in recordkeeping penalties are the oldest and most heavily enforced of the four — and they are the clearest demonstration of the gap.
The completeness verified is the completeness of the process, not of the corpus. The rule asks whether the archive faithfully stored what it was handed. It says nothing about whether everything that should have been captured was.
That gap is the entire two billion dollars. The firms had compliant archives. The messages never entered them.
The rule cannot detect its own blind spot — and no amount of compliance with it would have.
And since the 2022 amendments, tamper-evidence is optional. Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(i) is disjunctive: a system must maintain “a complete time-stamped audit trail” of all modifications and deletions, or preserve records “exclusively in a non-rewriteable, non-erasable format.” Before 2022, the second was the only route.
The audit trail is generated by the same system that holds the records. The regulation asks the system to vouch for itself.
The “designated third party” of 17a-4(f)(3) is an unaffiliated person who can furnish records to regulators if the firm will not. That is a custody backstop, not independent verification. No one outside the record-holder attests that the records are complete or unaltered.
| Instrument | Requires a record? | Defines tamper-evidence? | Requires completeness of capture? | Requires declared scope? | Verifiable by an outsider? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machinery Regulation Annex III, 1.2.1 |
Yes — 1 yr / 5 yr | No | No | No | No |
| AI Act Arts. 12, 19, 26(6) |
Yes — at least 6 months | No | No | No | No |
| Six state chatbot statutes |
No — none of them | — | — | — | — |
| SEC 17a-4 Advisers 204-2 |
Yes — 3 yrs / 5 yrs | Optional since 2022 | Process only | No | Access only |
Two regimes now compel a record of machine conduct with a retention clock attached. Six statutes compel a disclosure and no evidence of it.
The law has finished telling you to keep the record. It has not started telling you what makes one believable.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 12, Article 19, Article 26, Article 50, Article 99.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, Articles 3, 10, 51, 54; Annexes I, II and III — EUR-Lex, CELEX 32023R1230.
NY GBL Art. 47 · CA SB 243 · WA HB 2225 · OR Laws 2026 ch. 85 · ID SB 1297 · NE LB 525.
17 C.F.R. § 240.17a-4 · § 275.204-2 · FINRA 4511 · FINRA 3110 · SEC Enforcement remarks, 6 Nov 2024 · SEC release 2025-6.
Colorado SB 24-205 previously appeared in counts of this kind. Its disclosure duty was repealed and reenacted by SB 26-189, signed 14 May 2026, and the reenactment removed the duty to tell consumers they are interacting with AI; enforcement had already been suspended by federal court order on 27 April 2026. Tennessee SB 1580 is a prohibition on representing an AI system as a qualified mental health professional, not a disclosure mandate. Neither is counted above.