Standards & Procedures for Citing AI-Generated & Digital Media

This white paper is published by Erie Art Company (EACo) as a contribution to the evolving standards landscape for digital and AI-mediated creative practice. It represents EACo’s commitment to advancing responsible, transparent, and well-documented use of emerging technologies in the arts.

Erie Art Company is a nonprofit arts organization based in Erie, Pennsylvania, dedicated to advancing arts, culture, and community through creative programming, advocacy, and infrastructure development. EACo operates at the intersection of traditional arts practice and emerging technology, with active initiatives in digital arts, cultural heritage documentation, and community-based creative programming.

Institutional Context

This publication emerges from EACo’s direct engagement with the challenges of documenting, attributing, and preserving digital and AI-assisted creative works. As arts organizations increasingly adopt AI tools for creative production, audience engagement, and institutional operations, the absence of standardized citation and attribution practices creates risks for artists, curators, researchers, and the historical record.

EACo’s related initiative, CryptoArtkive, is developing blockchain-based provenance and documentation infrastructure for the cultural heritage sector. This citation guide complements that technical infrastructure by establishing the human-readable attribution standards that institutions, scholars, and practitioners need alongside machine-readable metadata systems.