I just came across the Done by Humans “movement,” which appears to similar to not by AI: both offer badges to display proudly on your human-made website after some kind of vetting process. I don’t understand the appeal of sites like these or what they offer, and I think it’s possible they represent a new way to mislead people about AI use on the web.
There are three main reasons I am wary of these efforts.
I don’t use AI on my website: I’ve coded it all by hand and I write all the words. I have a little hand-made badge on my front page that says as much, and it’s really easy to find other badges—or make your own—online. So the badges provided by Done by Humans and not by AI aren’t needed.
Also, because of the way the Internet works, if you want to use one of those sites’ badges—regardless of your AI use—you just download and re-host them.
Tangent about finding the badges #
... OK, so I was going to add the badges here, but at least DBH have made it a little more complicated to get a badge. Or they don't actually provide badges? I don't know, but now that I'm digging just a little deeper it's pretty clear the whole project is bunk.Some certificatespoint to websites that don't, and can't exist, while
otherspoint to archive.org pages,
presumablywritten by the author listed in the site? Regardless, it seems as though none of the submissions are properly vetted, so the value of having one of these badges seems pretty thin.
… OH! yes they do. I finally found this one on like, the eighth site I clicked on:
As for the not by AI badges, they want your email and possibly payment for the privilege of using their badges. And while the example badge at the bottom of their page isn’t right-clickable (and it’s just in English), it’s not hard to yoink it too using the advanced hacking technique of
view-source
:# 2. They don’t mitigate the cause that AI overuse is a symptom of
While I don’t like it when people say “AI is a tool,” it is a tool in the sense that when it causes problems, it’s not the AI per se but the people using it. AI (over)use is a symptom of late-stage runaway capitalism with its perverse incentives to maximize profit at the expense of every other metric, including human dignity, a healthy environment, etc. Putting a little badge on your site doesn’t mitigate those facts at all, and that’s true for my hand-made one as well.
“So why bother at all?” you might say. “While these sites don’t help anything, they don’t hurt either,” you might also say. “You admit a badge does nothing and yet you still have one; curious,” you might further intone.
I agree with each of these points. The point I’m trying to make here is subtle. Yes, no-AI buttons are equivalent to doing your own recycling (the overwhelming majority of waste is caused by industrial processes and individual recycling solves a vanishingly small proportion of the problem). Yes, something isn’t nothing (doing a little bit, like showing you personally care about not using AI, is better than doing nothing at all).
However, I think that having a third party verify (or not, apparently) whether you’re using AI in your personal site is endemic of the commodification of everything under late-stage capitalism. If you don’t use AI on your site, just say so. Make a dumb button yourself, or use the one on my site (don’t hotlink it, please!). It doesn’t have to be this big production.
Finally, the most baffling thing about these sites for me is that they aren’t actually against AI use.
not by AI clearly states that you can [generate up to 10% of your
content with AI](https://notbyai.fyi/help/what-is-the-not-by-ai-90-rule.php), and that You can freely use AI for inspiration purposes, supporting legal documents, non-user facing content, or looking for grammatical errors and typos.
Done by Humans takes a little more digging, but both of its
founders are in the AI business (emphasis mine): In 2020, [co-founder Pedro Favuzzi] founded KineticLab, a technology company developing accessible
AI-powered biomechanics and kinematics toolsto help bike fitters and movement specialists access high-quality analysis technology at affordable prices.
[Co-founder George Kovalev] is the founder of Barcelona Code School, where since 2015 he has helped hundreds of students transition into careers in software development, UX/UI design, game development, and
AI engineeringthrough intensive bootcamps and mentorship.
I’m not quoting these to “debunk” anyone, and I’m not making a value judgment outside of (A) I don’t personally like AI use at all and (B) I think it’s strange that a company claiming to champion things made by humans was founded by people who don’t seem to understand the serious ethical, economic, and aesthetic problems that modern AI tooling causes.
I’m writing this in the middle of 2026. I’m not sure if history will see this period as the height of the AI bubble, or the beginning of … something else (I think the concept of AGI is completely nonsensical, but who knows what businesses are going to do and/or claim).
I also read “Why I stopped ‘creating content’” by Michael Lynch yesterday, which I think makes good points about the commodification of creativity starting in the 1990s.
I think that, just as we’ve seen greenwashing to commoditize the environmental movement and pinkwashing for the Pride movement, sites like the ones I’ve showcased here represent “human-washing:” companies catering to the anti-AI crowd will have an incentive to claim their work is not created by AI, regardless of the veracity of that claim.
Done by Humans and not by AI aren’t the only sites offering badges, either. A quick search turned up By Human, Not AI, which at least empowers the user to build their own badge and doesn’t require you to register anywhere, and a Created with human intelligence badge that’s related to some substack, a platform I cannot pretend to understand or care about.
Anyway, the point is that handmade work is valuable, so capitalists will try to capture that value and subjugate it to their own ends. I’m purposefully avoiding a call to action here, because I think that the solution rests with all of us just talking to each other. That’s really what all art—writing, drawing, sculpting, websites, and the rest—is about.
Further reading #
"No AI" statements are much more than mere statements~ James Zhan replies toanother postabout whether it's useful to even include a "Made by human" statement at all.- " Trust and faith in our web" by Brennan K Brown, who writes (in paraphrase ofanother piece) thatthe moment you ask human artists to label their work as human, you've already conceded the terrain. You've agreed that the default assumption is ambiguity. That the burden of proof is now on the creator. I keep returning to that. We're being asked to prove we're not ghosts in our own house.
- Brennan links to this BBC articlewith an overview (from 2026-03-15) of human-made logo efforts. - This goofy-ass tweetby a Mr Sam Altman thanking people who "wrote ... software character-by-character." What a knob lol
Discussion #
Re: I don't really like the "Human-made" badging trend(firesphere.dev) makes a great point: "Know what AI content-guzzling machine operators love? Content made by humans. Because the Ouroboros of self-consumption from what the genAI poops out is starting to create a downward spiral."