AI Disclosure Statement Templates You Can Copy

A submission portal that asks for an AI disclosure statement rarely gives more than an empty text box and a two-line instruction. The right AI disclosure statement template depends entirely on what actually happened: language editing only, literature search assistance, code generation, data analysis, image generation, or no AI use at all. Guessing at the wording under a deadline is how a statement ends up vague enough that an editor sends it back, and copying the wrong template costs more time than writing the right one from scratch would have.

Every AI disclosure statement template below is built from the same core information every publisher's policy asks for: which tool, which version, what it did, and confirmation that a human reviewed the result. Pick the scenario that matches your paper, replace the bracketed placeholders with your own specifics, and drop the result straight into your manuscript. Most of these run three sentences or fewer once the brackets are filled in.

The mechanics of where a disclosure statement physically goes, and what counts as AI use worth disclosing in the first place, both vary by publisher. TextPulse's guide to university and journal AI policy maps the underlying rules these templates are built from, so check it if a template here needs adapting for an unusual case, such as a project that touches more than one scenario at once. What follows is the wording itself, scenario by scenario.

The table below is a shortcut. Match your situation to a scenario, note whether disclosure is typically expected, then jump straight to the matching template below it.

Scenario	Use this template when	Disclosure usually required?
Language editing only	AI checked grammar, spelling or phrasing, nothing more	Often exempt, but confirm with your journal
Literature search assistance	AI helped find or summarize sources you verified yourself	Yes, in almost every policy checked
Code generation	AI wrote or debugged code used in the analysis	Yes, name the tool and the task
Data analysis	AI ran or helped interpret part of the analysis	Yes, describe the specific part
Image generation	AI created or altered a figure or diagram	Check first, several publishers restrict or ban it
No AI used	No generative AI contributed at any stage	Only if your journal asks every author to confirm

The two fastest to fill in are usually language editing and no AI used. The two slowest are usually code generation and data analysis. These need more specific detail inside the brackets because a phrase like helped with the analysis isn't detailed enough for an editor who wants to know exactly which part AI touched.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: Language Editing Only

Use this when AI checked grammar, spelling, punctuation or phrasing only, and didn't draft, restructure, cut or add any content of its own. Most publishers exempt this level of use from mandatory disclosure, but include the statement anyway if your target journal asks every author to confirm AI use either way, since a growing number of submission systems now need an answer regardless of what that answer turns out to be.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: Literature Search Assistance

Use this when AI helped find, shortlist or summarize sources that you then checked against the original publications yourself, rather than citing anything the tool surfaced without opening the source first.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: Code Generation

Use this when AI wrote, completed or debugged code used to run an analysis, build a model, or produce a result reported in the paper, including a single function inside a larger script you otherwise wrote yourself.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: Data Analysis

Use this when AI ran, assisted with, or helped interpret part of a statistical or qualitative analysis reported in the paper, even if its role was limited to a single stage of a longer analytic process.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: Image Generation

Please check your target journal's policy before using this one. Some journals explicitly ban or prohibit use of generative AI to create research figures or other content such as main data images or graphical abstracts. A disclosure statement does not make a prohibited image acceptable. Please read the journal's own instructions for this specific case before drafting anything below.

AI Disclosure Statement Template: No AI Used

Use this when no generative AI tool contributed to the manuscript at any stage, and your target journal's submission process asks every author to confirm AI use either way, rather than leaving the question unanswered, which a growing number of journals now do by default.

None of the six wordings above replaces reading your target journal's own guide for authors first. All the bracketed placeholders are a starting point, and you can tweak the details if your journal's instructions want something more specific than what's given here. A statement that stays too vague reads the same as a missing one to most editorial systems.

Before you submit, running the finished manuscript through an AI word cleaner catches leftover AI-typical phrasing that a disclosure statement alone does not address, whichever template above applies to your paper.

TextPulse's policy on ethical AI use in academic writing explains why disclosure matters beyond satisfying a submission checkbox in the first place.

A thesis handles this differently from an article, and disclosing AI use in a thesis is set out separately. Whether a model can be named as an author at all is a prior question with a settled answer.

Save whichever template you actually used somewhere outside the manuscript file itself, along with the tool name and version at the time. The next paper, and the next journal's slightly different submission checkbox, will ask again, usually with no warning.