This Post was Written by a Human

Published

I started noticing disclaimers on articles posted on HN saying something along the lines of

This post was written by a human.

or

Written by a human, edited with AI.

or the converse

Drafted by AI, edited by a human.

A quick sweep for these disclaimers in HN-linked articles yields the chart below. It is probably incomplete (scraping the web has become painfully difficult) but that is not the point of this post. I still found it interesting enough to keep:

HN-posted articles with 10+ points, dated by the first Wayback Machine snapshot where an authorship disclosure is visible. Rudimentary regex and manual verification were used. Definitely not scientific evidence.
View chart data

First archived observations of authorship disclosures

  1. Month
    2022-12-01
    Category
    Human-written
  2. Month
    2023-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  3. Month
    2023-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  4. Month
    2023-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  5. Month
    2023-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
  6. Month
    2024-10-01
    Category
    Human-written
  7. Month
    2024-11-01
    Category
    Human-written
  8. Month
    2025-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  9. Month
    2025-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  10. Month
    2025-05-01
    Category
    AI help unspecified
  11. Month
    2025-05-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  12. Month
    2025-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  13. Month
    2025-08-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
  14. Month
    2025-09-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  15. Month
    2025-10-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
  16. Month
    2025-11-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  17. Month
    2025-11-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  18. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  19. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human-written
  20. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human-written
    Article
    xania.org
  21. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  22. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  23. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  24. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  25. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  26. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  27. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  28. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  29. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  30. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  31. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  32. Month
    2025-12-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    xania.org
  33. Month
    2026-01-01
    Category
    Human-written
  34. Month
    2026-01-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  35. Month
    2026-02-01
    Category
    Human-written
  36. Month
    2026-02-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  37. Month
    2026-02-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  38. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    Human-written
  39. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  40. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    Human-written
    Article
    terts.dev
  41. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  42. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    Human-written
  43. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    AI help unspecified
  44. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    Human-written
  45. Month
    2026-03-01
    Category
    Human-written
  46. Month
    2026-04-01
    Category
    AI help unspecified
  47. Month
    2026-04-01
    Category
    Human-written
  48. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
  49. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
    Article
    g5t.de
  50. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  51. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
  52. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
  53. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
  54. Month
    2026-05-01
    Category
    Human-written
  55. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  56. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  57. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  58. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
    Article
    grack.com
  59. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
    Article
    grack.com
  60. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  61. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  62. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  63. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  64. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  65. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  66. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  67. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  68. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  69. Month
    2026-06-01
    Category
    Human-written
  70. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  71. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
  72. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  73. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  74. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  75. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  76. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  77. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  78. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  79. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  80. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  81. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  82. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  83. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  84. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  85. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  86. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  87. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  88. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
  89. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  90. Month
    2026-07-01
    Category
    Human-written
  91. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written
  92. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written
  93. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written
  94. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    AI draft + human edit
    Article
    github.com
  95. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written
  96. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  97. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human + AI tools
  98. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    AI-generated/assisted
  99. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    AI help unspecified
  100. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written
  101. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    AI help unspecified
  102. Month
    2026-08-01
    Category
    Human-written

At one point I thought about adding such a disclaimer to my own texts as well. I thought it would make them feel more genuine. That it would show I had put in time and effort, and that I care. I felt the need to prove that the text was the result of my own thoughts, ideas, and creativity.

In the end, I never added such a disclaimer anywhere because the quality of a post should matter more than how it came to be. And attentive readers will know the difference between a text produced by someone who cared about the outcome and one produced by someone who did not.

Knowing how a text came to be does not impact its quality, so why should it matter?

For me, the perceived value of a text changes once I know whether it was written by AI or by a human.

I do not want to read a book written by AI. Besides the fact that I do not believe AI is at the level of writing whole, quality novels - not to say that this will never happen - I have an appreciation for the work a human puts into writing a book. Generating text from a prompt does not require the same kind of skill.

However, I am fine with an AI-written README.md.

The difference is expectation. When I read a README, I want correct information. I do not care who wrote it. But when I read an essay or a book, I assume there is a person behind the words.

This topic feels similar to asking whether AI “art” can be considered art. What makes art valuable? Is it the final object, or also the process that created it? In that sense, adding a “human” disclaimer to a post might increase its value for some readers by showing that a human put in the effort.