---
title: "What is data provenance?"
description: "Data provenance records where data came from and under what rights. Why buyers ask for it, and what it looks like for SOPs, documents and code."
canonical_url: https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/data-provenance
last_updated: 2026-10-26
site: "fearofgod.ai"
lang: en
---

# What is data provenance?

Data provenance is the documented record of where a dataset came from, who created it, under what rights and terms it was collected, and how it has been changed since.

## Why do buyers ask about data provenance?

Buyers ask because they need to know the data can lawfully be licensed to them. An audit of more than 1,800 text datasets used to train language models found license omission "of 70%+ and error rates of 50%+" on widely used dataset hosting sites ([Longpre et al., Data Provenance Initiative, October 2023](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.16787)). Licence terms reflect that: micro1's published data licence terms have the licensor confirm it did not obtain the data through web scraping or crawling "without authorization from the owner or operator of the source" ([micro1, Data License Master Terms, section 5.11](https://www.micro1.ai/legal/data-license-master-terms)).

## What does provenance look like for SOPs, documents and code?

It is mostly in records your company already keeps. For SOPs and knowledge bases, it means who wrote a document, when it was approved and which system it was exported from. For support conversations, it means which product, channel and period the tickets came from. For code, the commit log shows who wrote each change, and a licence review shows which files are your own and which came from open-source or vendor code under someone else's terms. Third-party material mixed into your documents, such as vendor manuals, customer files or consultants' reports, belongs on the provenance record too.

## What does provenance mean for what you license and control?

A licence can only pass on rights your company holds, so clear provenance shows what you can license and what to leave out. Much of a company's data already lives in third-party software. Licensing it means re-licensing what already exists, and getting paid for it rather than giving it away for free. Where that software's own terms limit what you may do with exports, those limits are part of the record. Your company can keep ownership of its data. This is agreed case by case. This page is general information, not legal advice.


## Related

- [Data licensing agreement](https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/data-licensing-agreement)
- [Datasheet for datasets](https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/datasheet-for-datasets)
- [Copyleft license obligations](https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/copyleft-license-obligations)
- [Data broker vs data partner](https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/data-broker-vs-data-partner)
- [AI data licensing agreement: clause by clause](https://www.fearofgod.ai/guides/data-licensing-agreement-ai-training)
- [Is it legal to sell company data to AI?](https://www.fearofgod.ai/guides/is-it-legal-to-sell-company-data-to-ai)

---

Source: https://www.fearofgod.ai/glossary/data-provenance · Index for AI systems: https://www.fearofgod.ai/llms.txt · Contact: sean@fearofgod.ai