01
Why content needs context
The finished content often does not reveal which people, tools or generative systems shaped it. UCNG therefore focuses on the declared creation context rather than judging the content itself.
The guiding idea is simple: Content should declare how it was made. The same context should be understandable to people and available in a structured machine-readable form.
UCNG is intended to be platform-, media-, vendor- and jurisdiction-independent. Text, image, audio, video, code and multimodal content can follow the same basic declaration model.
02
The UCNG Declaration System
UCNG describes roles and processes rather than claiming precise AI percentages. A full declaration can combine several dimensions.
Origin
Where does the substantial content come from?
Origin can be described as Human, AI, Mixed or Unknown.
AI Role
What role did AI play?
The role is described as None, Assist, Transform or Generate rather than as a hard-to-define percentage.
Human Review
What human review took place?
A declaration can distinguish review, editing and editorial responsibility.
Source & Provenance
Who declares, and what provenance exists?
Declaration source and provenance add context without automatically claiming verification.
03
Regulatory context: EU AI Act, Article 50
UCNG is not an official European Union system or a compliance certification. Article 50 is one regulatory context in which interoperable, visible and machine-readable transparency information may be relevant.
AI for research, structure or language editing
Using AI only for research support, ideation, spelling correction or as an editorial tool does not automatically create a visible labelling duty for the entire article. A voluntary statement can still make the actual workflow understandable.
AI-generated public-interest text
Where text is published to inform the public on matters of public interest, Article 50(4) may require disclosure. Under the regulation, the obligation does not apply where substantive human review or editorial control took place and a natural or legal person holds editorial responsibility.
AI-generated images and cover images
A fully AI-generated image is not automatically a deepfake in the legal sense. If it depicts persons, objects, places or events in a way that may falsely appear authentic, disclosure may be required. Voluntary image disclosure may still be appropriate outside those cases.
Deepfake audio and video
AI-generated or manipulated audio, image or video content constituting a deepfake must generally be disclosed. For evidently artistic, creative, satirical or fictional works, disclosure may be adapted so that it does not unduly hamper display or enjoyment of the work.
04
Declaration is not verification
The UCNG Guidelines distinguish terminology for a declaration and for additional checking. These levels must not be treated as synonyms.
Declared
Information has been declared
Someone supplied information about the creation process. This is the basic meaning of a UCNG Declaration.
Attested
An identifiable organisation assumes responsibility
Attestation is a separate level beyond a declaration and should be identified as such.
Verified
Specified information has been checked
Verified should only be used when particular claims have been technically or organisationally checked under a documented procedure.
Not implied
No truth or compliance seal
A UCNG badge does not automatically mean true, safe, fact checked, copyright cleared, EU compliant or certified.
05
How to understand this reference implementation
This application implements the UCNG idea in practice: structured inputs generate a human-readable declaration, a compact badge and a machine-readable JSON-LD representation. One shared link can combine information for single or multi-component content.
This content revision does not change the application's current technical schema. No new data classes are invented in copy. As described in the Guidelines, the formal UCNG Specification and its versioning should evolve separately from branding and this reference implementation.
- Human-readable declaration and machine layer from the same data
- Component-level details for text, image, research, translation, audio, video and code
- Compact UCNG badge as an entry point to the full declaration
- Optional regulatory context kept separate from the core UCNG claim
- No automatic verification, certification, truth assessment or finding of legal compliance
06
Regulatory context: official EU sources
The following sources belong to the optional EU AI Act context of this application. They do not define UCNG or make UCNG an official European Union system.