Not By AI^® 90% Rule, Explained

A Rule of Thumb

At least 90% of the content must be created by humans. Using AI for inspiration, legal support, non-user-facing content, or grammar checks is permitted.

The Not By AI 90% Rule states that at least 90% of the content must be created by humans. The rule does not apply to the use of AI for inspiration purposes, supporting legal documents (assuming legal content is not the main focus of your content or service), non-user-facing content, or grammar and typo checks. This means that if you use AI for brainstorming or concepting, generate up to 10% of your content with AI, and employ AI to find typos in all content, you remain in compliance with the Not By AI 90% Rule.

AI-generated content must not determine the core meaning or creative direction, regardless of percentage.

Not By AI reserves the right to determine the core meaning or creative direction of the content and the origin of the content in cases of ambiguity regarding whether it is human-created or AI-created.

Examples of What Counts Toward the 90%

The Not By AI 90% Rule applies to all content formats, except as otherwise specified in the rule. Below are non-exhaustive examples of content types covered by the Not By AI 90% Rule:

• Text (articles, blog posts, research, books, documentation)
• Visuals (artwork, illustrations, graphics, renderings, photos, images)
• Videos (movies, documentaries, short films, live streams, interviews, educational videos)
• Audio (music, sound effects, voiceovers, podcasts, audiobooks)
• Code, only when code is the main focus of your content or service

Examples of What Does Not Count Toward the 90%

• Metadata (SEO tags, image alt text when purely descriptive)
• Internal tooling (logs, caches, tracking metrics)
• Boilerplate legal documents (privacy policies, terms and conditions) when legal content is not the main focus of your content or service

Allowed AI Usage

• Inspiration / brainstorming
  AI may be used to generate ideas but the final structure and implementation must be defined and executed by humans.
• Supporting legal documents
  AI may be used to generate legal documents, such as privacy policies, but only when legal content is not the main focus of your content or service.
• Non-user-facing content
  AI may be used to generate content that is not directly user-facing, such as metadata.
• Grammatical error and typo checks
  AI may be used to identify grammatical and spelling errors and suggest alternative phrasing but may not introduce new arguments.

Common Scenarios

• Luna uses ChatGPT to draft a blog post about the ten best coffee shops in Philadelphia and lightly edits it before publishing it. Luna is not qualified to use the Not By AI Writer badge.
• Masako pastes a human-created research paper into Gemini and asks it to make it "sound professional" before turning it in for a review. Masako is not qualified to use the Not By AI Researcher badge.
• Ida uses Sora to generate six variations of a video of a white Arabian horse and manually selects the one to upload to YouTube. Ida is not qualified to use the Not By AI Producer badge.
• Damian enters an AI prompt that reads "change eye color to magenta" into Photoshop to change the eye color of a woman in a portrait photo. Damian is not qualified to use the Not By AI Photographer badge.
• Jia Jia comes up with an outline for an article and uses Claude to write the paragraphs. Jia Jia is not qualified to use the Not By AI Author badge.

Reminder: The Not By AI badges are available for a variety of content types. Only use badges on content that complies with the Not By AI 90% Rule. For example, if a music video contains human-made music and an AI-generated video, use the applicable musician badge(s) and do not use video-related badge(s) that may falsely indicate that the video is created by humans.