The APLS code (AI Provenance and Lineage Standard) is a three-position alphabetic classification system developed by Ansel Robateau (robaone.com) for creative work in the AI era to denote aspects of the creation process, distinguishing between the use of generative AI tools. The code is heavily modeled after the SPARS code used by the recording industry and was inspired by a conversation by Colin and Samir on their YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/watch?v=cVT7MbRBiLY&is=LHXtKjKtvDAfviSW). The code’s three positions refer to ideation, creation, presentation. The codes may be either ‘H’ for human, ‘C’ for collaboration with AI and ‘A’ for primarily or only AI.
The three letters of the code have the following meanings:
First letter - the genesis of the creative work. This answers the question, “Where did the original idea or intent come from?”
Second letter - the creation or assembly of the creative work. This answers the question, “How was the work written, constructed or built?”
Third letter - the curation, finishing or presentation. This answers the question, “How is the work polished and reviewed for final presentation?”
Twenty seven possible variants of the code exist but here are some of the most common:
HHH: Artisanal: 100% Human crafted from idea to final review and polish.
HCH: Intelligence Amplifier: Human ideation, collaborative and iterative drafting, human validation and polish
HAH: Supervised Generation: Human idea, AI generates the draft, human reviews and polishes and validates the final product.
AAH: Autonomous Assist: AI ideates and generates. A Human reviews and validates the final product.
AAA: Full Automation: AI does everything and there is no human review or accountability.
Use of these codes are designed to garner trust between audiences and creators and make it easy to communicate the use of AI.
Full disclosure: This article’s APLS code is HCH.
References:
APLS code explanation
I originally considered an APLS code of HHH for this article but reconsidered because the article references an early draft of the idea that was created during a conversation with an AI agent where it helped to come up with the name of the coding standard and the choice of letter and code examples. However, while I wrote the final article myself while referencing a wikipedia entry for the SPARS codes, the entire idea and choice of three letters came from my human mind.