Definitions for Writers

At a glance

The threshold: Written work must meet VH3 (Human-Led, AI-Assisted) or above to carry the VerifiedHuman mark.
The question: Who put the words together? Consider the authorship of the writing and how AI was used.
Editorial assistance: AI may improve your own writing for clarity, grammar, and flow, provided the ideas, meaning, and voice remain yours. Review the changes and take responsibility for the final work.
Translation: A human-written original retains its qualification through AI translation when that use of AI is clearly disclosed.
AI-generated drafts: Substantially reauthor the material in your own voice. Minor edits or a percentage of changed words do not establish authorship.
The Five-Word Principle: A prompt to examine wording carried over from an AI-generated draft, not a pass-or-fail count.

Essential Authorship

A writer chooses words and puts them together. Those choices establish the ideas, meaning, and voice of the work—from a single line to a whole book.

For this standard, essential authorship concerns who authored the writing and whose voice it expresses. AI can help revise human-written work without displacing that authorship, provided the writer’s ideas, meaning, and voice remain intact.

Who put the words together? Begin with the writing itself. Did a person write it and then use AI for editorial assistance, or did AI supply the initial draft or passage? Material that begins as AI-generated writing must be substantially reauthored in the writer’s own voice.

The same judgment applies to the whole work and to passages within it. The writer reviews the final work and takes responsibility for representing it honestly. A human-written original also retains its qualification through clearly disclosed AI translation.

The Five-Word Principle

When working from an AI-generated draft, notice the phrases you carry into your final work unchanged. Five consecutive words are a useful reason to pause and examine the passage.

Have you substantially reauthored it in your own voice, or is the expression still essentially AI’s?

Five is a gut-check, not a pass-or-fail count. Keeping a common phrase does not settle authorship. Neither does changing enough individual words to avoid a five-word match. What matters is your authorship of the passage as a whole.

This check applies to AI-generated material you present as your own writing. Disclosed AI translation, permitted editorial assistance, and clearly attributed quotations are assessed according to their respective guidance.

A shared phrase such as “as a matter of fact,” or a coincidental overlap in wording, does not establish AI authorship.

Go deeper.

Open the explanations, examples, and terms you need.

Human authorship and AI

The human role behind the standard.

Readers deserve to know who created the work they are reading. VerifiedHuman certifies human authorship through a shared standard and the writer’s commitment to it.

AI can support research, planning, and editorial work. The guidance below distinguishes assistance with human-written text from writing that begins as an AI-generated draft. It also explains how a human-written original can reach readers through a disclosed AI translation.

Writers are free to experiment. A poet might build one piece from AI-generated phrases and write the next without them. VerifiedHuman membership leaves room for both. Use the mark on work that meets the standard.

Which level describes your work?

From entirely AI-generated to entirely human.

The Human–AI Spectrum has five levels. Written work at VH3, VH4, or VH5 qualifies for the VerifiedHuman mark. These levels describe how the writing was authored.

VH5 · Entirely Human-Written

You author the original work without generative AI.
Traditional tools such as word processors, spell-check, and thesauruses are fine.
The work reflects your voice, perspective, and creative decisions.

VH4 · Human-Written, AI-Enhanced

You supply the original writing.
AI may support research, outlining, brainstorming, and citation formatting. It may also improve the clarity, grammar, and flow of your writing.
Your ideas, meaning, and voice remain your own. You review the changes and take responsibility for the final work.
Having AI generate a draft or passage from a prompt or outline is assessed under VH3.

VH3 · Human-Led, AI-Assisted

You lead the creative process and substantially reauthor AI-generated material in your own voice.
The final writing reflects your authorship and creative choices. Minor edits or a particular percentage of changed words are not enough.
Use the Five-Word Principle to examine wording carried over from an AI-generated draft. It is a gut-check, not a numerical threshold.

Work below VH3 does not qualify for the VerifiedHuman mark.

AI translation is permitted with clear disclosure. Identify the translated version’s use of AI even when the original was written without generative AI.

See the complete Human–AI Spectrum

Using AI in your writing

How the standard applies to AI assistance.

You are responsible for deciding whether your work meets the standard. Consider where the writing began, how AI contributed, and whose ideas, meaning, and voice the final work expresses.

Research and outlining

You may use AI to research a subject, organize your thoughts, or suggest an outline, then write the text yourself. AI has helped with preparation. You have supplied the writing.

Editorial assistance and sentence rewriting

AI editorial assistance is permitted. Writers may use AI to improve the clarity, grammar, and flow of their own writing, provided the ideas, meaning, and voice remain the writer’s. The writer reviews the changes and takes responsibility for the final work.

Having AI generate text from a prompt or outline is assessed separately under the guidance for AI-generated material.

Translation

AI translation is permitted. A human-written work retains its VerifiedHuman qualification when translated with AI, provided the use of AI translation is clearly disclosed.

A simple disclosure is:

Human-written original. Translated with AI.

Working from an AI-generated draft

VH3 allows AI-generated source material when you substantially reauthor it in your own voice. That can involve rethinking the structure, developing the ideas, and rewriting the expression. The judgment concerns your authorship of the resulting work.

Replacing a few words, changing the tone, or making minor edits is not enough. Nor does changing a particular percentage of words establish authorship. Ask whether you have substantially reauthored the passage or whether its expression is still essentially AI’s.

The same test applies if you read an AI-generated paper and then write your own version. Reading the draft does not settle the question. What matters is the writing you produce.

Quoting AI-generated text

Clearly attribute AI-generated passages that you quote. Those words are presented as quotations, rather than as writing you authored. The surrounding work still needs to meet the standard.

AI assistance in practice

A closer look at a writing and research decision.

Research assistance

Sarah is writing a 2,000-word article about climate change. She uses generative AI to summarize ten scientific papers, suggest an outline, and format citations. She checks the research against the original papers and writes every sentence herself.

This is VH4: Human-Written, AI-Enhanced. AI supported the research and preparation. Sarah supplied the writing.

An editorial revision

A writer drafts a paragraph, then asks AI to make it clearer without adding ideas. The tool changes phrasing and sentence structure. The writer reads the revision carefully and accepts it, with their ideas, meaning, and voice intact.

This is also VH4. The writer supplied the original writing and used AI for editorial assistance. Having AI generate that paragraph from a prompt or outline would instead require substantial reauthoring under VH3.

Terms used in the standard

The language used in the commitment.

Standard: A commitment to specific creative practices.
Writer: The author of written work.
Represent: Claim, present, or share work as your own.
Written work: Words selected and arranged in a meaningful order to be read.
Team: A group of people working together.
Intellectual property: A creative work to which one has legal rights, such as copyright or trademark.
Essential: Fundamental to what something is.
Essentially authored: Written through human authorship, with the permitted forms of AI assistance described in this standard. AI-generated source material must be substantially reauthored in the writer’s own voice.
Essential written elements: Words.
Human: A person, or something originating from a person.
Generative AI: AI systems that generate text, images, audio, code, or video in response to prompts.
Machine learning: Methods that learn patterns from data to make predictions or generate content.
Other generative processes: Other AI or machine-learning processes that create new content.
Artificial intelligence (AI): A field of computing concerned with systems that perform tasks such as learning, reasoning, and generating content.
AI language model / large language model (LLM): An AI model trained on large amounts of text to generate language.
Word: A distinct, meaningful element of speech or writing.
AI editorial assistance: AI help with the clarity, grammar, or flow of human-written text, while the writer’s ideas, meaning, and voice remain intact. The writer reviews the changes and takes responsibility for the final work.
AI translation: Rendering a human-written original in another language with AI. The original retains its qualification when the use of AI translation is clearly disclosed.
Substantial reauthoring: Reauthoring AI-generated material in the writer’s own voice, so the result reflects their authorship. It is assessed through the resulting writing, not a percentage of changed words.

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Definitions for other fields

Visual artists Musicians Voice actors Content creators

Human–AI Spectrum