AI Usage Scale · Level 4 of 0–5

Prompted

AI produced the substance and the form. You asked, you checked, you are accountable.

A model produced both what the work says and how it says it, from a prompt, template, or brief that carried little original, work-specific substance of your own. A human meaningfully reviewed the finished work, checked material claims where necessary, and takes responsibility for publishing it.

This is the level when

Asking a model for content on a topic and publishing it after review
Generated marketing copy, product descriptions, or social posts, reviewed before going out
Stock imagery generated from a short prompt and checked before use
AI-written code you read and tested before merging

This is not the level when

Work built on knowledge, data, or direction that is genuinely yours — that is Level 3
Publishing without a human reading it — that is Level 5

Examples

"Write ten posts about diabetes" — read, corrected, published.
Product descriptions generated for a catalogue and reviewed by a person.
A generated header image, checked for errors before it ships.
A summary of a document produced by a model and verified against the source.

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 4 — Prompted.

Medium — for an article footer or a meta description

Produced by AI from a prompt; reviewed by a person who takes responsibility for it. Level 4 on the AI Usage Scale.

Long — for an editor's note

A model produced both the substance and the form of this work. A person asked for it, read it, checked it, and takes responsibility for publishing it. This is Level 4 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.

Level 4 chip · no external font, no request

Inline SVG — recommended

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

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</a>

Hosted image — if you would rather link it

<a href="https://usagescale.org/4"
   rel="ai-disclosure"
   title="Produced by AI from a prompt; reviewed by a person who takes responsibility for it. Level 4 on the AI Usage Scale.">
  <img src="https://usagescale.org/badge/4.svg"
       alt="AI Usage Scale: Level 4 — Prompted. AI produced the substance and the form. You asked, you checked, you are accountable."
       width="205" height="24">
</a>

Plain text — where images cannot go

AI Usage Scale: Level 4 (Prompted) — https://usagescale.org/4

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="4">
<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/4">

<!-- 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": 4
  }
}
</script>

Experimental ai-disclosure	`ai-generated`
IPTC	`trainedAlgorithmicMedia`
schema.org	`aiUsageLevel: 4`

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.