The Human Only Public License
16 Oct 2025
Whether artificial intelligence systems will end up being a positive or a
negative force for humanity is still an open question. But we might find ourselves
one day with AI embedded at every layer of our existence, living lives of toned down and
diluted humanity with only our dreams for escape. Although I am not yet convinced
of this worst case scenario, I believe it is important that we as software developers
have at least the option to opt out of that system altogether, to be able to continue hacking,
working, and tinkering in a space of our own in total absence of artificial intelligence
systems, and share this luxury with our users.
I designed a software license for this purpose, you can find the full text below. It
is called the Human Only Public License, or HOPL for short.
The idea is that any software published under this license would be forbidden to
be used by AI. The scope of the AI ban is maximal. It is forbidden for AI to analyze
the source code, but also to use the software. Even indirect use of the software is
forbidden. If, for example, a backend system were to include such software, it would
be forbidden for AI to make requests to such a system.
The burden of compliance is placed on AI systems and their users, not on software deployers. If
you make a website using HOPL software, you are not breaking the license of the software
if an AI bot scrapes it. The AI bot is in violation of your terms of service. It is sufficient
for you as a user of the software to put a robots.txt that advertises that AI scraping
or use is forbidden.
Other than the anti-AI provision, the license is maximally permissive, like an MIT license,
but there is still a copyleft clause to make sure that derivative works are also AI-restricted.
What is this license good for? Anything! Any software, text, art, and more that you might have used an
MIT license for will benefit from using the HOPL instead, if you want to prevent your work from
being used by AI.
You might wonder as well, don't we already have robots.txt? How effective is this license? What I
can tell you, from working at a large software corporation, is that while nobody cares about robots.txt,
people care about licenses. There are automated tools to find and check software licenses and
raise alarms if 'bad' ones are used. And I can guarantee that HOPL will brightly flash red.
On a last note, I am not a legal expert, so if you are, I would welcome your suggestions for improvements. I
didn't make this license just as a joke. I truly believe it is necessary that we have such a
good license to foster and protect human-only online spaces.
note: this license is also published on github