AI Usage Scale
EN
AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed. The substance is yours. AI produced the form. AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed. The substance is yours. AI produced the form.

AI Usage Scale · Level 3 of 0–5

Directed

The substance is yours. AI produced the form.

The work-specific knowledge, evidence, argument, composition, or constraints are yours and materially determine the result. A model produced most of the final words, pixels, or sound from those original inputs. You directed, chose, corrected, meaningfully reviewed, and are accountable for the result. Writing or refining a prompt is not enough by itself.

This is the level the current binary label cannot see, and the reason this scale exists. An expert who dictates what they know and lets a model shape it has not committed a fraud. They have used a tool, and they can now say so.

This is the level when

  • A specialist supplying knowledge, notes, data, or a detailed brief that a model turns into prose
  • An art director iterating an image through many rounds of specific direction
  • Research you conducted, turned into a script or a narrated video by a model
  • A codebase you specified and reviewed in detail, written largely by an AI agent

This is not the level when

  • A prompt or iterative prompting that contributes no original, work-specific substance — that is Level 4
  • Work where you wrote most of the final words yourself — that is Level 2

Examples

  • A surgeon dictates thirty years of practice; a model writes the article; the surgeon corrects and signs it.
  • A founder's raw notes and pricing become a landing page written by a model.
  • An illustrator directs forty iterations of a generated image against a specific composition.
  • A researcher's dataset and findings become an explanatory video narrated by a synthetic voice.

Say it in a sentence

Paste one of these into a byline, an article footer, a video description, a search-result description, or an email signature. No image required — a declaration that only works as a picture is a declaration half the web cannot read.

Short — for a byline or a bio

AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed.

Medium — for an article footer or a meta description

The knowledge, data and argument are the author's; AI produced the text from them. Level 3 on the AI Usage Scale.

Long — for an editor's note

The substance of this work — the knowledge, the data, the argument, the direction — is the author's. A model produced most of the final form from it. The author directed, verified, and takes responsibility for what it says. This is Level 3 on the AI Usage Scale.

Put the mark on it

Copy the badge as inline SVG and it renders instantly, works offline, and sends no request to us. That last part matters: a hotlinked badge is a tracking pixel on your page, and a standard about honesty has no business shipping one. The hosted file below is there for convenience, not because we want the traffic.

AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed. The substance is yours. AI produced the form. AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed. The substance is yours. AI produced the form.

Level 3 chip · no external font, no request

Inline SVG — recommended

Self-contained. Nothing to load, nothing to track.

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Hosted image — if you would rather link it

<a href="https://usagescale.org/3"
   rel="ai-disclosure"
   title="The knowledge, data and argument are the author's; AI produced the text from them. Level 3 on the AI Usage Scale.">
  <img src="https://usagescale.org/badge/3.svg"
       alt="AI Usage Scale: Level 3 — Directed. The substance is yours. AI produced the form."
       width="205" height="24">
</a>

Plain text — where images cannot go

AI Usage Scale: Level 3 (Directed) — https://usagescale.org/3

Let machines read it too

The same declaration, in the vocabularies the compliance layer already speaks. We are not competing with these — we are the human-readable face of them.

For the <head> of your page

<!-- AI Usage Scale proposal; custom metadata, not a registered standard -->
<meta name="ai-usage" content="3">
<meta name="ai-usage-standard" content="https://usagescale.org">

<!-- Experimental syntax aligned with discussions in the W3C AI Content Disclosure Community Group; not a W3C standard -->
<meta name="ai-disclosure" content="ai-generated">

<!-- AI Usage Scale -->
<link rel="ai-disclosure" href="https://usagescale.org/3">

<!-- schema.org -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "CreativeWork",
  "additionalProperty": {
    "@type": "PropertyValue",
    "propertyID": "https://usagescale.org/spec#aiUsageLevel",
    "name": "aiUsageLevel",
    "value": 3
  }
}
</script>
Experimental ai-disclosureai-generated
IPTCtrainedAlgorithmicMedia
schema.orgaiUsageLevel: 3

If the parts differ

Optional. A single number describes the work as a whole. When parts of it differ sharply, declare them. The badge always shows one number; the breakdown lives behind the link.The headline level describes the part of the work that carries its meaning. Decorative material that a reasonable audience would not consider material to the work does not drive the headline — declare it here instead.