CAHDD™ (Computer Aided Human Designed & Developed) — voluntary workflow transparency + watermark too
I’ve been working in architectural visualization and CG for a long time, and like everyone here, I’m watching how fast things are shifting with AI getting baked into more tools and workflows.
This isn’t another “AI is good” or “AI is bad” post. That conversation is already everywhere and usually goes nowhere.
What I’ve been thinking about is something more practical.
How do we clearly communicate what we actually did as artists?
What CAHDD™ is
CAHDD™ (Computer Aided Human Designed & Developed) is something I’ve been developing as a voluntary way to describe workflow transparency.
Not a rule system. Not a gatekeeper. Not trying to tell anyone how to work.
Just a way to say, in a clear and visible way:
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how much was human-driven
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how much was assisted
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where the decisions were made
Think of it like a visible fingerprint of authorship, not a judgment.
Why this even matters
Whether we like it or not, more tools are heading toward:
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embedded AI features
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automated processes
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potential platform-level labeling
Some of that could become automatic or even mandatory over time, and if that happens, artists won’t control how their work is represented.
This is an attempt to get ahead of that and say:
maybe we define our own way to communicate process before platforms do it for us
The watermark and visual indicator side
Part of this is a simple visual layer:
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watermark
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signature
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logo
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small indicator showing workflow level or approach
Not meant to be intrusive. Not meant to ruin presentation.
Just something subtle that says:
this is how this piece was made
Reducing friction (Photoshop extension)
One of the biggest problems with anything like this is effort. If it takes extra time, people won’t use it.
So we’ve been building and testing a Photoshop extension that:
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applies watermarks, signatures, or logos non-destructively
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works within PSD workflows
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allows saved presets for size, opacity, and placement
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designed to be quick enough to not interrupt production
The goal is simple:
if someone wants to adopt this, it should not slow them down
We are testing it across different scenarios before releasing it publicly.
What this is not
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not trying to police anyone
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not anti AI
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not saying one method is better than another
This is about clarity, not judgment
What I’m looking for
This community has always been grounded when it comes to craft, so I’m genuinely interested in feedback:
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does something like this make sense in real workflows
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would you ever use a voluntary system like this, or is it dead on arrival
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where does it break down
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what would make it actually usable instead of just another idea
Link (more detail):
https://cahdd.org/
I know this is a bit outside the usual threads here, but it felt relevant given where things are heading.
Appreciate any honest feedback, good or bad.
Replies
The whole site seems to be 90% AI created, where's the watermark explaining that?
Also, there seem to be zero human names on that website, if I go to About Us or Who We Are, there are zero people to learn about.
Sorry, I can see the idea is interesting. But the presentation seems quite tone-deaf.
The whole website seems to rely on AI heavily. Basically all the images seem to be AI (ironically not using your own system to declare it, as far as I can see) and it's reasonable to assume the same for the writing.
There are a lots of words, but nothing in the "about" section really tells me who is behind all this. I guess I could google your name, and I can understand the notion that this is not about you or your associates (if there are any) but I guess you can also see how that looks a bit strange. So if you are saying "This is not a product", I'm immediately asking "Is it, though"?
(Edit 2: E.g. there are registered trademarks and the icon is not in the public domain)
Again, there's lots of text. That sort of makes sense if you want to get people on board and clear open questions, but I'm not reading through all of that, especially if there's a good chance that a lot of it is AI fluff.
The system/watermark itself sort of makes sense as well, but feels way to convoluted. Very few people will keep all of those steps in mind or look it up constantly. E.g. a small AI is clear and self-explanatory, while a pictogramm of a human where the indicator gets fuller the more AI is used is a bit unfortunate.
I can see something like that being used/enforced on a platform basis, but personally, I'd rather see less watermarks on images than even more. And obviously, this would never make it to an end consumer facing product, it's more for galeries and stock and portfolios.
It might make sense as a general tool to quickly inform people about your techniques, but in its current form it seems just too convoluted, and then there's the question if you can really call AI a "technique" that has a place in a continous spectrum of art techniques, which this kind of implies.
Edited the last paragraph.
I really do appreciate the direct feedback from everyone. There’s a lot in here that’s useful, even if some of it is coming in a bit hot.
A few clarifications and a couple things I clearly need to improve. This is a not-for-profit endeavor that started out as a discussion with other design professionals and when I found time I took that feedback and created the site and have been constantly trying to refine it, I get nothing out of this.
On the AI usage point, it is disclosed on the site in the footer and in the articles, but that’s obviously not visible enough if people are missing it. That’s on me. If the whole idea is transparency, it needs to be front and center, not something you have to look for.
On the visuals, some are AI-assisted and some are not. If anything looks off or low quality, that’s a fair hit and I need to tighten that up. The goal isn’t volume, it’s credibility.
On the “who is behind this” point, also fair. I tried to keep the focus on the idea instead of myself, but I can see how that just comes across as vague or even suspicious. I’ll be adding that context.
On complexity and the amount of text, I hear you. The current version is heavier than it needs to be. What I’m working toward is a much simpler, practical version that someone can understand quickly and use without thinking about it.
Just to be clear on intent, this isn’t about pushing AI or trying to normalize it. If someone wants nothing to do with it, that’s completely valid. This is more about giving people a way to describe their process on their own terms, including fully human work.
At the end of the day, if this adds friction or feels unnecessary, it won’t get used. That’s something I’m taking seriously and adjusting for.
Appreciate everyone taking the time to call it out, this is the only way we can improve the concept and make it resonate with artist and design processionals. I do not take it lightly when you take the time to respond and comment. Now I will respond to some directly.
Eric:
Thank you for your time. AI slop, there is imagery used on the site that is AI assisted, most the time postproduction used, the child has four fingers you are confusing the toy they are holding, but understand that is the first thing to look for and comment on, but that isn't the case in that situation. I started working on the project in 2024 and I do use Grammarly and ChatGPT to check grammar and, flesh out concepts, but everything is initiated from my concepts and drafts and final review, but you are correct tools and AI are used, but I started the project before I even knew about ChatGPT, so really as this post will prove I am guilty of being long winded and need to work on that.
Watermark for whole site, I covered above, but I can find humor and truth in that, covered in footer and articles have transparency disclaimers below them.
Person behind it, that as fair as mentioned above I tried to stay behind the scenes and not be ego driven so to speak, that may have been a mistake. My name is Russell Thomas I am the founder of 3DAllusions LLC which use to be a thriving community, which I have kept up but it is not active anymore as I am trying to figure out what best to do in that area as I actually value forums over social media, but forums have died off, so I have some ideas for later down the road. I also created MrMaterials which was the largest Mental Ray materials repository in the world back in the day and we converted some of that into finalRender materials when NVidia pulled the plug on mental ray and I have kept it up as some people tell me they still use it for content. My visualization studio 3DAStudio funds all the endeavors including CAHDD and I am moving towards clothing apparel graphics as well. I graduated from WSU's architectural program in 1992 and have been working in architecture since then as well. My friends in archvis and architecture worked with me on the concept, but nobody wanted to commit to creating the system with me and they told me I was crazy to take on this endeavor as it is an uphill battle, they were probably right, but I really believe in this. Since then, other people have believed in the system and have been helping out and we have multiple communications with render engine companies that I will not name until they say something. We are doing reach outs to design professional organizations and educational institutions and associations.
I appreciate you telling me that we are missing the mark, that is exactly why I posted, it may sting a bit after all the work put into this, but it will make the project better in the end, so thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Noren,
Thank you for your valuable time. The place this was coming from isn't to normalize AI but really for those who don't use it or only partially to indicate that, but any scale has to have the opposite end to it, I obtained TechRatio.com and HumanoCentricus.com as supporting domains to use in the process. How I see AI work in the arts as eventually being traditional art being seen by some like the 'Arts and Crafts' movement or even 'Etsy' where some people prefer it and want to support it. Then there will be those who think there should be a human making decisions and controlling AI involvement and will want at a minimum that level of involvement. Then there will be those who don't care one way or the other or even want to support AI because they have a financially vested interest in AI succeeding and being widely accepted. I personally have no problem using AI to create a royalty free image for an article, but none of the work my studio has delivered to date has been AI created, we do show what AI can do but it hasn't been what our deliverables have been so far. With that said, programs like Photoshop and On1 use AI for masking, sky replacement, etc. so we do use AI that is now integrated in our traditional postproduction pipeline, and I am even using Grammarly now, is it AI? If you fully reject AI we then all you need to do is use stage 0-1.
I answered the disclaimer about AI above, we have tried, we show it on our work in the gallery and have disclaimers on the site and after articles.
As mentioned above I am guilty of being long winded, but I did do a drop down 60 second read summary on almost all the pages, the content is not 90% AI generated, but imagery is highly AI generated for hero and footer images, but our own artwork is shown on the site as well as in the gallery.
As I see it the 'BIG FAIL' in the site is that it apparently doesn't express that it is the concept and not any icon or watermark, those are provided as examples and we see this as a way to make it more acceptable to have your signature or logo on your work you can have a small circle with a number in it as part of your signature/logo similar to a copyright sign that is very faint and subdued if you want or you can just put on your site or in your agreement a blurb of what CAHDD stages you work in. In the world today I see Stages 0-3 where we would work in and where most will, but to be on the conservative and make sure we are honest we use a stage 4 disclaimer and I imagine most here work in 0-2. Circling back to the icons and watermarks the human shaped icon is considered for website pages for example, the watermarks are simple and subtle graphics that you may only use one or two of. We also state that we see people creating their own and even sharing them, the circle with the number in it or a hand with the fingers corresponding to stages another concept........ And a graphic is elective, we don't expect you to do anything if don't want to.
I would argue that with automatically meta data embedding that defines what your image is or isn't coming down the pipeline, it should be consumer/front facing to have your signature/logo on your work, whether you choose to customize it with some sort of indicator of CAHDD stage, that is up to you, but artist need to start taking control and narrating their own story and workflow IMHO.
As for technique question of term, etc. you may have a point there, to be honest this was a huge undertaking to create all this and much more work than my architectural thesis, I don't claim it is perfect and I posted hoping to actually get feedback, so thank you for that.
Zack:
No offense, we worried about people taking it that way, we kept it a dot-org, we mention not-for-profit and we didn't link this site to our other ones to get any SEO juice, we have done our best to express a concern and a potential action/movement to help counter it. there is nothing gained and lots of blood sweat and tears. Refer to the following narrative for the story behind that isn't meant to gain sympathy, but people seem to think there is a con behind all this.
Origin Story:
The concept started because when AI came out, playing around with Midjourney felt guilty and I knew and I knew I couldn't deliver to clients or sell art that was AI generated, but I had some ideas on how it could be useful. I soul searched and realized for me, if I was transparent about it, I could feel comfortable about it. So, an idea of watermarks or indicator of some sort came to mind, that is when I started discussing it with other artist and professionals. But busy life didn't leave time to do much more than brainstorm and outline ideas......
Fast forward a bit and my wife's cancer caused us to spend weeks on end in hospitals in different city's and rather than wallow in negative thoughts I decided to move forward with this as I feel very strongly about it. So I spent hundreds of hospital room hours creating the site and many more once it was live tweaking it and writing articles that I think show what makes the human factor the most important element.
I continue to work on it and promote it as I think it has merit and trying to improve by putting it out there and asking for imput and suggestions from people potentially much smarter and talented than myself.
Once again, thank you for taking your time and commenting, offering your critiques and suggestions, it is truly valuable to me and we will take it under consideration and implement changes in the site. For those of you who think the site is long winded AI slop, after this post you can see it is my longwinded slop
Thank you,
Russell Thomas
The website text is long winded. I think you need to trim it way way down. Get to the point quickly. tl;dr is real.
Sorry to come across as so dismissive initially, but as Pior hinted at, there’s unfortunately a high bar to cross since we’re all so overwhelmed with LinkedIn-style slop. To get past that, you’ll need the site to be clearer and get upfront faster.