Do you indicate when AI helped? 🤖

AI is a productivity force multiplier, and in some situations, it is good to be transparent that it helped you. Other times, it is more important that the message feels like it came personally from you.

So, in what situations should you attribute AI? Let's find out.

Benefits of attributing AI

• Adoption - Spread and encourage usage of AI by showing how and when you use it, enabling others to think about when they can use it too
• Transparency - Others can identify AI-generated content, promoting openness and trust
• Responsibility - Encourages responsible use of AI-generated content
• Accountability - If there's something wrong with the content, you can tell that someone has used AI lazily (see rules on avoiding Automation Bias and using AI responsibly)

When shouldn't you attribute AI?

Not attributing AI doesn't mean simply omitting the attribution. It means thoroughly checking the output, and rewording it yourself if necessary, such that you own the work.

• External communication - It's important for clients and other external stakeholders to know that your work has been given a “human touch” and genuine effort has been put in. Otherwise, it could make you look lazy
• When AI use is assumed - These days, most code is shipped with the help of AI. It's expected that the quality of this code is of a high standard, and attributing code you commit to AI may appear that you are “hiding” behind the disclaimer

✅ Figure: Good example - Microsoft flags docs as "AI-assisted content"

The 🤖 emoji

To save space and time, you can use the 🤖 emoji to indicate that AI helped.

You should draw a distinction between “AI helped” and “AI wholly wrote this”.

❌ Figure: Bad example - Draws too much attention to the attribution

✅ Figure: Good example - Much cleaner, using the emoji

When AI wrote something entirely, use two robot emojis.

❌ Figure: Bad example - Has the potential to leave a bad impression on the reader.

✅ Figure: Good example - Two emojis indicate that the content was entirely AI generated

This is also important for generated images, Meta has developed invisible watermarks that can be used to indicate that an image was generated by AI.

Google has also done something similar. Check out Identifying AI-generated images with SynthID.