Organisations worldwide are racing to develop a universally recognised label for “human-made” products and services as part of the growing backlash against AI use.
Declarations like “Proudly Human”, “Human-made”, ‘”No A.I” and “AI-free” are appearing across films, marketing, books and websites.
It is in response to fears that jobs or entire professions are being swept away in a wave of AI-powered automation.
BBC News has counted at least eight different initiatives trying to come up with a label that could get the kind of global recognition that the “Fair Trade” logo has for ethically made products.
But with so many competing labels – as well as confusion over the definition of “AI-free” – experts say consumers are in danger of being left confused unless a single standard can be agreed on.
“AI is creating significant disruption and competing definitions of what is ‘human made’ are confusing consumers,” says consumer expert Dr Amna Khan from Manchester Metropolitan University.
“A universal definition is essential to build trust, clarification and confidence” she told BBC News.
The movement to create AI-free certification systems follows generative AI tools being used to replace human work and creativity in range of industries including fashion, advertising, publishing, customer services and music.
The organisations trying to come up with the labels include companies as well as non-profits, based in the UK, Australia and the US.
How the certifications work
Some labels like no-ai-icon.com, ai-free.io and notbyai.fyi, can be downloaded by anyone for free or for a fee without much or any auditing.
Other systems like aifreecert require payment and have a strict process of vetting whether or not a product has used AI or not. Auditors use professional analysts and AI-detecting software.
But AI experts say that getting industries to agree what truly counts as “human made” will prove complicated as AI is integrated into so many everyday tools.
“AI is now so ubiquitous and so integrated into different platforms and services, that it’s truly complicated to establish what ‘AI free’ means,” says AI Research Scientist Sasha Luccioni.
“From a technical perspective, it’s hard to implement. I think that AI is a spectrum, and we need more comprehensive certification systems, rather than a binary with AI/AI-free approach,” she said.
Generative AI-free
Some think that the line should be drawn at the use of generative AI – chatbots that create text, code, music or video with human prompts.
In the closing credits of the 2024 Hugh Grant thriller Heretic producers wrote a disclaimer saying: “No generative AI was used in the making of this film.”
Film distributor The Mise en scène Company has taken this idea on and recently added a ‘No AI was used’ stamp to the poster for its latest film which was written, directed and edited largely by one person.
The distributor has also published its own classification online that it hopes others in the industry will follow.
“We support the AI industry and we think its an exciting time but we think that as a result of AI content there is an economic premium put on human-made content and we want to lean into that,” says CEO Paul Yates.
AI disruption
The arts industry is particularly rife with AI-made products and seems to be the current focus for the push back against AI use.
Entire books and films are being made with AI far faster and more cheaply than using traditional methods.
Bollywood film studio Itelliflicks specialises in making films with AI and proudly boasts about it.
But sometimes products that rely on AI don’t make that clear to consumers.
This was the case last year with the viral band Velvet Sundown that was revealed to be fully AI.
Elsewhere in the book industry, publishing giant Faber and Faber began putting a “Human Written” stamp onto some of its books.
Author Sarah Hall requested the stamp be added to her novel Helm. Hall also described the intellectual property theft of books used to train AI models as “creative larceny at scale”.
But Faber has not said how it classes ‘Human Written’ books or what auditing it does to ensure no AI is being used.
UK company Books by People agrees there needs to be a trusted standard for how human authorship should be disclosed.
“Publishers are grappling with a new landscape where books can be produced in minutes rather than months or years and readers can no longer be sure if a book reflects a human experience or machine imitation,” says co-founder Esme Dennys.
The company has signed up five publishers and put its first stamp on the book Telenova which came out in November.
Books by People charges publishers and requires them to carry out questionnaires about their practises and how they vet their authors. The company also checks samples of books periodically to check for AI writing.
