{"slug": "i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend", "title": "I don't really like the \"Human-made\" badging trend", "summary": "A writer criticizes the 'Done by Humans' and 'Not by AI' badge movements, arguing they are unnecessary, easily circumvented, and potentially misleading. The writer notes that both organizations allow some AI use—Not by AI permits up to 10% AI-generated content—and that their founders are involved in the AI industry, undermining the badges' anti-AI stance.", "body_md": "I just came across the [Done by Humans](https://www.thisisdonebyhumans.org/) “movement,” which appears\nto similar to [not by AI](https://notbyai.fyi/): both offer badges to display proudly\non your human-made website after some kind of vetting process.\nI 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.\n\nThere are three main reasons I am wary of these efforts.\n\nI 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.\n\nAlso, 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.\n\n… OH! yes they do. I finally found this one on like, the eighth site I clicked on:\n\nAs for the not by AI badges, they want your email and possibly\n[ payment](https://notbyai.fyi/pricing) for the privilege of using their badges.\nAnd while the example badge at the bottom of their page isn’t\nright-clickable (and it’s just in English), it’s not hard to yoink it\ntoo using the advanced hacking technique of\n\n`view-source`\n\n:While I don’t like it when people say “AI is a tool,” it *is* a tool in the\nsense that when it causes problems, it’s not the AI *per se* but the\npeople using it.\nAI (over)use is a symptom of late-stage runaway capitalism with its\nperverse incentives to maximize profit at the expense of every other\nmetric, including human dignity, a healthy environment, etc.\nPutting a little badge on your site doesn’t mitigate those facts at\nall, and that’s true for my hand-made one as well.\n\n“So why bother at all?” you might say.\n“While these sites don’t *help* anything, they don’t hurt either,” you\nmight also say.\n“You admit a badge does nothing and yet you still have one; curious,”\nyou might further intone.\n\nI agree with each of these points.\nThe point I’m trying to make here is subtle.\n*Yes*, no-AI buttons are equivalent to doing your own recycling (the\noverwhelming majority of waste is caused by industrial processes and\nindividual recycling solves a vanishingly small proportion of the\nproblem).\n*Yes*, something isn’t nothing (doing a little bit, like showing you\npersonally care about not using AI, is better than doing nothing at\nall).\n\n*However*, I think that having a third party verify (or not,\napparently) whether you’re using AI in your personal site is endemic\nof the commodification of everything under late-stage capitalism.\nIf you don’t use AI on your site, **just say so**.\nMake a dumb button yourself, or use the one on my site (don’t hotlink\nit, please!).\nIt doesn’t have to be this big production.\n\nFinally, the most baffling thing about these sites for me is that they aren’t actually against AI use.\n\nnot by AI clearly states that you can [generate up to 10% of your\ncontent with AI](https://notbyai.fyi/help/what-is-the-not-by-ai-90-rule.php), and that\n\nYou can freely use AI for inspiration purposes, supporting legal documents, non-user facing content, or looking for grammatical errors and typos.\n\nDone by Humans takes a little more digging, but both of its\n[founders](https://www.thisisdonebyhumans.org/team) are *in* the AI business (emphasis mine):\n\nIn 2020, [co-founder Pedro Favuzzi] founded KineticLab, a technology company developing accessible\n\nAI-powered biomechanics and kinematics toolsto help bike fitters and movement specialists access high-quality analysis technology at affordable prices.\n\n[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\n\nAI engineeringthrough intensive bootcamps and mentorship.\n\nI’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.\n\nI’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).\n\nI also read “[Why I stopped ‘creating content’](https://refactoringenglish.com/blog/why-i-stopped-creating-content/)” by Michael Lynch\nyesterday, which I think makes good points about the commodification\nof creativity starting in the 1990s.\n\nI think that, just as we’ve seen [greenwashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing) to commoditize the\nenvironmental movement and [pinkwashing](https://byhumannotai.com/) for the Pride movement,\nsites like the ones I’ve showcased here represent “human-washing:”\ncompanies catering to the anti-AI crowd will have an incentive to\nclaim their work is not created by AI, regardless of the veracity of\nthat claim.\n\nDone by Humans and not by AI aren’t the only sites offering badges,\neither.\nA quick search turned up [By Human, Not AI](https://byhumannotai.com/), which at\nleast empowers the user to build their own badge and doesn’t require\nyou to register anywhere, and a [Created with human intelligence](https://www.fastcompany.com/91159067/all-artists-should-start-using-this-created-with-human-intelligence-badge)\nbadge that’s related to some substack, a platform I cannot pretend to\nunderstand or care about.\n\nAnyway, the point is that handmade work is valuable, so capitalists\nwill try to capture that value and subjugate it to their own ends.\nI’m purposefully avoiding a call to action here, because I think that\nthe solution rests with all of us just *talking* to each other.\nThat’s really what all art—writing, drawing, sculpting, websites,\nand the rest—is about.\n\nthe 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.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend", "canonical_source": "https://www.acdw.net/human-made", "published_at": "2026-07-23 00:07:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-29 04:31:11.535244+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Done by Humans", "Not by AI", "Pedro Favuzzi", "KineticLab", "George Kovalev", "Barcelona Code School"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-don-t-really-like-the-human-made-badging-trend.jsonld"}}