Human-Made Art verification: criteria, review, and what to do if you are not approved
The Human-Made Art badge is a public certificate that you are a real artist making real work. This guide covers what the badge signals, where the line sits between AI tools that are welcome and AI tools that are not, how the review process works, how long it takes, and what to do at every possible outcome — including being denied and re-applying.
What the Human-Made Art badge signals
Verified artists get a set of public marks that show up across ArtHelper:
A verified badge on your profile and on every piece of work you upload.
A green ring around your avatar across the community and feeds, so other artists and visitors can recognize verified work at a glance.
Priority placement in the public artist directory, sorted above unverified profiles.
An AI-training blocker applied to every image you upload, so your work is not scraped to train AI image models.
An embeddable badge you can paste onto your own website, Shopify storefront, Squarespace site, or anywhere HTML runs.
Eligibility for the Artist Spotlight program, which showcases verified artists across email and the homepage rotation.
What qualifies, and what does not
The principle is the line we draw in plain language: tools that assist the artist are welcome. Tools that replace the artist are not. If the making still happens through you, the work qualifies. If the making happens without you, it does not.
Welcome — tools that assist
Editing software — Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, and the photographer’s edit pipeline.
AI writing assistants for titles, descriptions, captions, artist statements. Using AI to clean up a description is the modern version of hiring a copywriter; the artwork is still yours.
Digital painting and 3D tools — Procreate, Blender, Figma, the Photoshop brush engine, and similar.
AI-powered search, layout, and organization of your own portfolio.
Not allowed — tools that replace
Generative image models as the source of the artwork — Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, Sora outputs.
Prompt-to-image as the primary act of making. Describing an idea is not the same as making one.
Heavy generative fills that produce the image rather than refine it.
Re-uploading someone else’s generated work as your own.
The mark is a certificate on you, the artist — not stamped on a single painting. You verify once, and your whole body of work earns it.
How verification works
Every portfolio goes through a two-stage check:
Flagged — our detection model scans every image in your portfolio for generative markers. Clean portfolios are verified instantly. If the model flags one or more images, those images enter the review queue.
Reviewed — trusted, long-standing members of our trust team look at the flagged images in context. The model is the first pass; humans make the final call on anything uncertain.
Decided — the work is either accepted with a public note, or declined with the reason shown. You get an email either way.
How to apply
Go to arthelper.com/verify. If you are not signed in, you will be prompted to.
Read through the criteria on the page and confirm your work qualifies.
Click Get the Badge (or Sign In to Get Verified if you are not signed in yet).
Choose a plan — monthly or yearly. The yearly plan saves $36 compared with paying monthly.
Complete checkout. Stripe handles the payment directly on the page.
Your portfolio is automatically scanned. If everything is clean, the badge appears within minutes. If anything is flagged, you will see “Verification Under Review” on the page and you will get an email when the trust team has decided.
How long it takes
Clean portfolios are verified instantly. Portfolios that need human review typically take two to three business days. You will get an email notification when the review is complete.
What to do if you are approved
The badge goes live on your profile and on every artwork the moment review completes. To use it everywhere:
Visit your verified status page at arthelper.com/verify to download the embeddable badge for your own website.
Pick a badge style — Corner ribbon, Floating pill, Stamp, or Footer bar — and the position, theme, and size.
Click Copy snippet and paste the HTML into your site. Snippets are provided for WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and Webflow as well as plain HTML.
Share the verification news on social using the pre-made announcement cards. There are square, portrait, and Reel-aspect cards with your name and member number ready to post.
What to do if you are not approved
A denial is not the end. You can fix the flagged portion of your portfolio and re-apply.
Open the email or the verification status page. The reason for denial is shown next to “Verification Not Approved.”
Go to My Artwork and remove the flagged images from your portfolio.
Return to arthelper.com/verify and click Re-apply for Verification.
Your portfolio is automatically re-scanned. If the flagged images are gone and the rest is clean, the badge is granted.
If you believe the model was wrong about your work — for example a photograph it mistook for an AI generation, or a digital painting flagged as a generative output — leave the images in place and reply to the denial email. The trust team can take a second look with context. The community-review path is the right channel for honest edge cases.
Common reasons for denial
Generative outputs in the portfolio — even a few AI-generated images in an otherwise human-made portfolio cause a flag. Remove them and re-apply.
Heavy generative fills on photographs or paintings. Light retouching is fine; large filled areas produced by AI cross the line.
Re-uploads of someone else’s work. This is a separate concern from AI, and reposting someone else’s images — generated or not — will be flagged.
Mixed portfolios where some series are human-made and some are AI-generated. The mark covers the artist, so the whole portfolio has to be on the right side of the line.
Common questions
Do I have to be selling art to get verified?
No. The badge is open to any artist whose work qualifies, whether you sell, exhibit, or just make work for yourself. It is a statement of authorship, not a commercial requirement.
Can I cancel my membership?
Yes, anytime. Cancellation stops the next renewal and removes the badge at the end of your current billing period. If you cancel and re-apply later, your portfolio is re-scanned through the same review process.
Does the badge cover work I make in the future?
Yes. The mark is on you as the artist. Anything you upload going forward gets the verified badge automatically, provided it continues to meet the criteria. If you later add generative work to your portfolio, your verified status can be reviewed and revoked.
What if my work is a hybrid — collage, mixed media, or includes some digital elements?
Hybrid and mixed-media work is welcome as long as the making still happens through you. Collage, photography composited from your own source images, digital paintings, 3D renders you built yourself — all qualify. Edge cases go through the community review step, where humans look at the work in context.
Where do I see my verification number?
Once verified, your profile and the verify page show your Human-Made ID and the date you were verified. The certificate of authenticity and the embeddable badge both display this number.
How do I share that I just got verified?
Open arthelper.com/verify after your badge goes live. The page includes pre-made share cards with your name and member number, sized for Instagram, X, and feed posts. Pick a card, edit the caption if you like, and post.