Can AI Be Listed as an Author?

AI as author

The disallowed practice of listing a generative AI system (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) in the author byline or contributor list of a scholarly work, on the rationale that AI cannot meet authorship criteria requiring accountability, agreement, and the capacity to take public responsibility.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 5 Sept 2026

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Every major authorship framework relevant to academic publishing — ICMJE, COPE, WAME, and the policies of essentially all major publishers (Nature Portfolio, Elsevier, SAGE, JAMA/AMA) — has converged on the same conclusion: an AI system, including a large language model, cannot be listed as an author. The reasoning is not a style preference; it follows directly from what authorship requires. The ICMJE’s own four-part authorship test (see ICMJE authorship criteria) requires that an author be able to approve the final version for publication and be held accountable for the integrity of the work — an AI tool cannot give informed consent to publication, cannot hold or be assigned a conflict of interest, and cannot be held legally or professionally accountable if the work is later found to be flawed or fraudulent. Because it cannot meet the accountability criterion, it cannot meet the test at all, regardless of how substantial its textual contribution was.

ICMJE formalised this directly in its May 2023 Recommendations update (Section II.A.4): AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and any use of them in the writing process must be disclosed. COPE’s position statement on ‘Authorship and AI tools’ (13 February 2023) reaches the same conclusion independently, and its subsequent guidance has extended the same reasoning to AI use in image generation, peer review, and editorial decision-making. See ICMJE’s generative-AI policy for the disclosure mechanics in full.

What disclosure looks like instead of authorship

AI contributions that fall short of authorship are not therefore invisible — they are disclosed, typically in the Methods section, the Acknowledgements, or a dedicated AI-use statement, naming the specific tool, version, and what it was used for (see generative AI disclosure statement). This mirrors, deliberately, how the ICMJE framework already treats human contributors who provided real value but do not meet the four-part authorship test: acknowledged, not authored. CRediT’s contributor-role taxonomy provides a mechanism for crediting substantial human oversight of AI-assisted work without implying the AI itself held a role.

References

ICMJE Recommendations, Section II.A.4 (May 2023 update)
COPE, ‘Authorship and AI tools’ position statement (13 February 2023)

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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  "datePublished": "2026-05-21T01:54:18",
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