{
  "$comment": "The AI-provenance ecosystem, mapped by the AI Usage Scale. `relation`: interoperates = we emit its vocabulary or map into it; complements = answers a different question and pairs with us; adjacent = neighbouring signal or prior art; cautioned = listed with the evidence, not endorsed.",
  "self": "https://usagescale.org/ecosystem.json",
  "page": "https://usagescale.org/ecosystem",
  "standard": "https://usagescale.org/levels.json",
  "categories": [
    {
      "key": "provenance",
      "title": "Cryptographic provenance",
      "blurb": "Proves which tools and edits touched a file. Answers \"what happened to this asset\", not \"whose thinking is inside it\" — the two are complementary, not competing.",
      "entries": [
        {
          "name": "C2PA (Content Credentials)",
          "url": "https://c2pa.org",
          "role": "An open technical standard for tamper-evident, cryptographically signed content provenance.",
          "relation": "complements",
          "note": "Its own FAQ states the core spec \"does not support attribution of content to individuals or organizations.\" Provenance can be proven; contribution can only be declared. Both belong on a work."
        },
        {
          "name": "Content Authenticity Initiative",
          "url": "https://contentauthenticity.org",
          "role": "A cross-industry initiative implementing C2PA Content Credentials across cameras, editors and platforms.",
          "relation": "complements",
          "note": "Free to join. We present the AI Usage level as a contribution/review signal that sits alongside a Content Credential, never as a replacement for it."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "disclosure",
      "title": "Disclosure vocabularies",
      "blurb": "Machine-readable statements about how a work was made. This is the layer the AI Usage Scale lives in, and every level emits into the established ones.",
      "entries": [
        {
          "name": "IPTC Digital Source Type",
          "url": "https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/",
          "role": "An established controlled vocabulary for how media was created (human, AI-generated, composite…).",
          "relation": "interoperates",
          "note": "Every level maps to a valid IPTC term. The mapping is lossy in one direction on purpose: IPTC cannot tell Levels 3, 4 and 5 apart, because it has no term for whose substance a work carries or whether a person reviewed it."
        },
        {
          "name": "W3C AI Content Disclosure CG",
          "url": "https://www.w3.org/groups/cg/ai-content-disclosure/",
          "role": "A W3C Community Group incubating syntax for AI content disclosure states.",
          "relation": "interoperates",
          "note": "Community Group work is incubation, not a W3C standard. Our emitted `ai-disclosure` metadata is experimental and aligned with this discussion; we contribute use cases and tests, and do not claim endorsement."
        },
        {
          "name": "schema.org",
          "url": "https://schema.org",
          "role": "The shared vocabulary search engines read for structured data.",
          "relation": "interoperates",
          "note": "The six levels are published as a schema.org DefinedTermSet (CC0), so a level is citable by machines as a term, not just a page."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "watermarking",
      "title": "Watermarking",
      "blurb": "Embeds a signal inside generated pixels or tokens. A useful provenance hint for detecting a specific model’s output — orthogonal to a maker’s honest declaration of contribution.",
      "entries": [
        {
          "name": "Google SynthID",
          "url": "https://deepmind.google/technologies/synthid/",
          "role": "Imperceptible watermarking for AI-generated image, audio, text and video.",
          "relation": "complements",
          "note": "Answers \"did this specific model generate this?\" A declaration answers \"what role did a human play, and who is accountable?\" A work can carry both."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "consent",
      "title": "Consent & licensing signals",
      "blurb": "Whether a work may be used for training. A different question from disclosure — a declaration describes how a work was made and does not grant or deny any training right.",
      "entries": [
        {
          "name": "Spawning / Do Not Train",
          "url": "https://spawning.ai",
          "role": "Opt-out registries and signals (ai.txt, Do Not Train) letting creators refuse AI training use.",
          "relation": "adjacent",
          "note": "Consent, not disclosure. Licences, terms, robots.txt and access controls remain authoritative over training; nothing in this standard overrides them."
        },
        {
          "name": "Not By AI",
          "url": "https://notbyai.fyi",
          "role": "A badge asserting content was made without generative AI.",
          "relation": "adjacent",
          "note": "A binary human/AI mark that charges for commercial use. The AI Usage Scale is a gradient, is CC0, and starts at Level 0 for exactly the human-made case — no fee, no permission."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "key": "detection",
      "title": "Detection",
      "blurb": "Tools that guess whether text was machine-written. This standard does not rely on detection, and lists it here with the evidence rather than the sales pitch — so the reader can weigh it honestly.",
      "entries": [
        {
          "name": "AI text detectors (GPTZero, Turnitin, Originality.ai, …)",
          "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02819",
          "role": "Classifiers that estimate the probability a passage was AI-generated.",
          "relation": "cautioned",
          "note": "In a Stanford study, seven detectors flagged 61% of genuine TOEFL essays by non-native English speakers as AI-generated; 97.8% were flagged by at least one. A standard enforced by detection is a machine for accusing the innocent — which is why this one is enforced by public, falsifiable self-declaration instead."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}