TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 16—19 · FACTUAL · EVOLVING
Disclosure
A disclosure records the tool, the task and what you did afterwards.
The idea
A disclosure is a record: what the machine did in a piece of work. Four kinds of reader ask for it, each for a different reason. A school wants to know what you learned. A competition wants to know what was generated, so entries are judged alike. A client wants to know what they can rely on. A publication wants to know what was made and found. The rules differ by place and get firmer every year; some require a disclosure, some do not, anonymous entries may forbid one. The record is the same: tool, task, what you did afterwards.
Why it matters
A record kept as you work can answer any of the four readers in a sentence. The same facts reconstructed after the question read as a confession. Same facts, very different position — and the Lab's advice, stated as advice, is to keep the record whether or not anyone has asked.
See it in the studio
A jury asks, "Is that render generated?" Two answers. "Partly — the sky and the people are from an image model; the building is my model, the plan is mine, and I re-drew the ground floor after the render showed the entrance was wrong." Or: a pause. The first answer opens a conversation about the design. The second ends one.
Watch for this
A disclosure that names the tool and nothing else. "Made with AI" tells a reader nothing they can use. Say the task, and say what you did afterwards. That is where your authorship shows.
Try it
Take one piece of your own work. Write its record once — model and version, what was generated, what you changed, which references, which decisions you kept and rejected. Then write the disclosure line four times from that record: for your school, for a competition, for a client, for a magazine. Note what changes between the four. Then find your school's actual policy and check whether your line would satisfy it, and whether it was required at all.
Prove it
Produce the record for one real piece of work — tool, task, what you changed — and show how the disclosure drawn from it would need to differ for two different readers, including one who did not ask for it.
How it works
Norms are forming from several directions at once: institutions' academic-integrity policies, competition rules that now carry AI clauses, publishers' author guidelines, and early labelling rules for generated content in some jurisdictions — the EU's from 2 August 2026. They do not agree with each other, and they change every year, which is why the card is EVOLVING and dated. The Declaring AI card on this map is the rule to find first: what this assignment allows and requires. This card is the record you keep so that, whatever the rule turns out to be, you can answer it. The part that does not change is older than AI: say what you did, in the place where it will be read.
What this idea builds on
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.