Prioritise human creativity, thinking, and oversight. Not to preserve outdated processes, but for the connections your businesses hope to make in future.

Protect and enforce the economic and moral rights of creatives, and support current and future efforts that allow livelihoods to flourish and businesses to grow.

Demonstrating integrity through transparency is essential to meet changing customer demands. More than ever, loyalty is earned by allowing customers to give informed, dynamic consent about when and how they engage with what you offer.

Focus on the business of solving tangible challenges. Practitioners and businesses alike should evaluate how AI supports more effective outcomes, instead of being distracted by novelty and hype.

AI tools, often developed by homogenous teams and trained on biased data, risk perpetuating harmful stereotypes and excluding diverse perspectives. Be proactive in your work to be fair and inclusive.

AI is changing the landscape for bad actors online, and therefore privacy and security cannot be afterthoughts. Your reputation, and trust in your AI-powered products and services, depends not only from what you deliver, but also from how your business protects customers.

Standards  are written to encourage action. The AI Council decided that principles alone,  in this context, would be too high level, difficult to implement, and not offer enough support on how to achieve a desired outcome. These standards will include guidance on how to achieve the stated goals, making them  easier to ‘action’. This is especially important when it comes to issues like transparency, privacy, fairness and sustainability. These are specialist topics and many of us require clear guidance to implement best practice.

With these standards, the AI Council aims to provide a blueprint of priorities, to help our members reflect on whether we’re meeting the expectations set out by our community. And we seek to create a framework within which our members  can work successfully, because setting out what good looks like, helps us all make better, more-informed decisions.

The development of these standards were informed by research and activities taking place in government, academia and the technology and creative industries.  This included reviewing new legislation, strategies and policies created by the US, EU, UK, Australian, Canadian and Chinese governments. We also read AI ethics and governance policies by technology companies including Adobe, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Stability AI and as well as principles and standards created by media organisations like CNN and the BBC.  Early input from the BIMA membership was also captured via an online survey. This activity concluded the first phase, Discovery, and the creation of draft AI standards.

On Thursday 21st November 2024, the BIMA AI Council presented the final draft of the AI Standards on a BIMA AI CoLab call. We collected a second round of feedback from the BIMA membership  during this 60 minute online session. This feedback was used to iterate the standards and progress them to the second phase, Alpha.

The Alpha AI Standards document was then made public so that feedback could be collected from a wider community of people. The AI Council led a public consultation from 17 February – 10 March 2025. Comments and additions were reviewed by the Council members and where relevant, incorporated into the final Beta v1.

Innovation is ever-changing and for that reason, the AI Standards will always be in final Beta.  We want to encourage current and future members of the AI Council, BIMA team and membership to ensure they always reflect best and next practice.

As a result of this approach, you’ll be able to share feedback with us at any time. Feedback will be reviewed regularly and considered by the AI Council which is currently Co-Chaired by Oliver Veysey and Lisa Talia Moretti.  To make it easier for the BIMA AI Council to incorporate your feedback and iterate the standards please reflect on the following questions and use them to shape your comments:

1. Does this standard resonate with me?
2. Does this standard relate to my work?
3. Does the information, research and guidance in this standard feel complete?
4. After reading the supporting sections, i.e. Why it’s important, What you can do, What to ask yourself, do I feel confident enough to implement this standard in my work?
5. What else should I tell the BIMA AI Council that would make it easier to implement this standard?

Yes, we encourage anyone in the creative industry to provide their feedback.

Updates on the standards will be shared on the BIMA Slack channel #member_opportunities and BIMA’s official LinkedIn page.

This is a collaborative effort between the AI Council and BIMA, but we can’t do it alone. As ever, we look to the BIMA membership and wider community for feedback, constructive discourse, interesting provocations and big questions to ensure that the Standards represent a horizon we are all sailing toward.

The BIMA AI Standards are not mandatory and there are no penalties for not using them. BIMA and the AI Council have created them to support best practice and hope that they are useful, helpful and meaningful to many.