The Apache-2.0 license, and the Apache Individual Contribution License Agreement, both remind contributors that they are responsible for disclosing any copyrighted materials in submitted contributions that are not their original creation. This is as true when using generative AI tooling, as it is when using materials from public websites or code from other open-source projects.
Disclosure is not the only obligation the ICLA places on contributors. You also represent that each of your contributions is your original creation (section 5). So a contribution does two things at once: it discloses any third-party material it contains, and it states that the rest is your own work. Both obligations must still be met when the contribution was produced with generative AI tooling.
Section 7 of the ICLA covers submitting work that is not your original creation, but it asks for the complete details of the work's source. For AI-generated output, those details are generally not knowable, so Section 7 is not a practical route for contributing AI-generated material.
When disclosing these materials, contributors should also identify the licensing for these materials. The ASF maintains a 3rd Party Licensing Policy that provides guidance on which licenses are acceptable, along with instructions on the treatment of 3rd Party Works.
While in general, content generated by a non-human (e.g., machine or monkey) is not copyrightable, if content consists of some portions generated by AI and other portions authored by a human, the portions authored by a human may be copyrightable.
As explained by the following U.S. Copyright Office Registration Guidance (3/16/2023):
“For example, a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that “the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” Or an artist may modify material originally generated by AI technology to such a degree that the modifications meet the standard for copyright protection. In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are ‘independent of’ and do ‘not affect’ the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself.”
The U.S. Copyright Office has since confirmed this position in its report Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025): purely AI-generated output is not copyrightable, but works where a human has creatively selected, arranged or modified AI-generated material may be, assessed case by case.
These portions authored by a human may come from meaningful modifications the human makes; prompts alone are generally not sufficient. However, a prominent concern with generative AI is the risk of reproducing copyrightable portions of materials that they were trained on, some of which may be copyrightable subject matter. Thus, a recommended practice when using generative AI tooling is to use tools with features that identify any included content that is similar to parts of the tool’s training data, as well as the license of that content.
The U.S. Copyright Office has since confirmed this position in its report Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025): purely AI-generated output is not copyrightable, but works where a human has creatively selected, arranged or modified AI-generated material may be, assessed case by case.
Given the above, code generated in whole or in part using AI can be contributed if the contributor ensures that:
Note that whether AI-generated output is copyrightable subject matter is currently unsettled, and the answer may differ between jurisdictions. A contributor relying on condition 2.1 alone ties their contribution to an answer nobody knows yet. Where practical, meeting condition 2.2 or 2.3 is the sounder route.
When providing contributions authored using generative AI tooling, a recommended practice is for contributors to indicate the tooling used to create the contribution. This should be included as a token in the source control commit message, for example including the phrase “Generated-by:
Also note section 8 of the ICLA. If you later learn something that makes these representations inaccurate, you agree to notify the Foundation. For example, you may discover that a tool's output reproduced code under an incompatible license. If that happens, contact legal-private@apache.org.
Finally, please note that while the above seems like a reasonable set of guidelines in August 2026, this is a rapidly evolving area. Whatever we recommend to PMCs today, policies will need to be re-evaluated and updated in response to:
We will continue communicating with PMC and ASF members as updates to this FAQ get discussed and merged in.
The above text applies to documentation as well. Pay attention to tools that have restrictive licensing for the generated content, caution should be applied, make sure it complies with the 3rd Party Licensing Policy and 3rd Party Works.
As with documentation, the above principles would still apply. Though with images being a non-textual form, the details quickly become complex. We expect this to continue to be a rapidly evolving area.
Don't second guess vendor's terms of use (TOU). Your usage of their tools is bound by the totality of the given TOU and you are not expected to go outside of the TOU text for further clarifications.
Refer to the 3rd Party Licensing Policy as with any other contribution.
It is not in the interest of the ASF to tell developers what tools to use. You may use whatever tools you wish provided that you follow the guidance in this document.
The guidance above covers contributions to code and documentation repositories. Different rules can apply when AI-generated text is published to the public: project announcements, security advisories, blog posts, release notes, and website content.
Under the EU AI Act (in force since 2 August 2026), such text must be labeled as AI-generated unless a person reviewed it before publication and takes responsibility for it. A committer or PMC member reviewing AI-drafted content as they would any other contribution is enough; nothing more is needed. If no one reviews it, for example a bot posting announcements or replies directly, the published text must state clearly that it was generated by AI.
In short: review it before you publish it, or label it.
