Dubai has launched a first-of-its-kind system to distinguish between content created by humans, machines, or both. Announced on July 16 by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council, the new framework is designed to bring more transparency to content creation and knowledge-sharing in the digital age.
Rather than calculating exact percentages of machine involvement, the system offers creators a clear way to disclose how AI was used. It’s meant to be flexible across all sectors and media formats — including text, images, and videos — and can be applied across industries.
The system, titled ‘Human-Machine Collaboration Icons’, introduces a set of five primary icons that indicate the level of involvement between humans and AI in producing content:
1. All human – content was created entirely by a person, with no machine input
2. Human led – human-produced content enhanced or checked by a machine for things like accuracy or clarity
3. Machine assisted – humans and machines worked together, going back and forth to produce the final result
4. Machine led – AI took the lead in generating the content, with humans reviewing and verifying it
5. All machine – content was generated entirely by AI with no human contribution
In addition, there are nine functional icons that indicate which parts of the process involved collaboration — from idea generation to data interpretation, translation, visual design, and more.
Dubai government entities are being urged to adopt the icons in their research and content outputs, making the emirate a leader in transparent AI-human collaboration.
This move is just one of several recent AI-related innovations in the UAE. The government recently launched AI performance system aimed at improving efficiency and saving over 250,000 work hours annually. Meanwhile, a few days ago, RTA introduced AI-based traffic signal system to improve traffic flow based on real-time conditions.
Dubai continues to take the lead in integrating artificial intelligence in ways that prioritise innovation and accountability.
