Ethics Charter for AI and Arabic and Islamic Heritage

About this Charter

AI can make manuscripts and texts far easier to reach. It can also attribute to a source something that the source does not contain. This Charter addresses that risk directly: that a reader is shown a quotation, an attribution or a link between names that cannot be checked against the original.

Its approach is philological and documentary, not religious or normative. It asks where a text occurs, in which edition, at which place, and how it was found. It does not ask what ruling follows from a text, or what ought to be believed.

By Arabic and Islamic heritage we mean the written heritage in Arabic script, whatever the language, origin or country of those who wrote it. Arabic comes first in the Initiative's work because it is the language of the sources and of the scholarly community, not as a claim to own this heritage.

Guardrails

The following ten guardrails are binding on every tool the Initiative develops and on everything it publishes. They are deliberately brief so that they stay clear; the articles of the Charter set out how they are applied.

• No fatwas and no religious rulings: the Initiative's tools have no fatwa mode, give no religious rulings and no theological assessment, and do not rank schools of law.
• No verdicts on hadith: the tools show where a text occurs, not whether it is authentic or authoritative. If a text is not found, the result is stated only in this form: “not found in the stated edition at the stated location”. It is never described as “fabricated”, “inauthentic” or “without basis”. Such a result is checked by a person before it is published.
• Qur’anic text verbatim: it is shown only word for word from a named standard edition of the Qur’an, and any deviation from that edition leads to the result being discarded.
• No silent merging: every link between names or records states its method and its level of confidence.
• No mirroring of digitised images: manuscript images are never copied to the Initiative's servers. They remain with the holding institution and are reached through a link back to the source.
• Private collections only with consent: holdings of individuals and families are included in the Initiative's work only with their written consent, which they may withdraw at any time.
• Conflict regions only through established bodies: in conflict regions the Initiative works solely through bodies with an established mandate, such as UNESCO, ALIPH or local archives, and undertakes no rescue operations of its own.
• AI does not replace scholarship: nothing is published without prior philological and textual review by a qualified person.
• No hidden commercial use: the Initiative's results are not put to undisclosed commercial use. If a company connected with the Founder of the Initiative makes use of them, it does so on the same terms as anyone else and with public disclosure.
• No measurement of religious content in other systems: if a system that also answers questions of Islamic jurisprudence is measured, the measurement covers citation fidelity alone, never whether a legal answer is correct. No system is measured without the consent of its operator.

Articles of the Charter

The ten articles below govern the Initiative's work in more detail. Each of them is open for comment in this draft, on substance as well as on wording.

1. Article 1: Purpose and scope

   The purpose of this Charter is that every statement AI makes about the written heritage in Arabic script remains traceable to its source and to the holding institution. The Charter applies to all tools, data and publications of the Initiative, and to those who contract with it to the extent agreed in writing. For everyone else it is an open offer that binds no one.

2. Article 2: Duty to cite

   The Initiative's tools show a quotation only after it has been matched against the text of its source, and they attribute nothing to a source unless its presence there has been verified. If verification is not possible, the tool declines to answer and says so, rather than guessing. Every result states its level of confidence, and compliance with this article is measured against the Citation Fidelity Standard that the Initiative is developing.

3. Article 3: Provenance

   Every statement carries its provenance in a form that both people and machines can read: source, edition, location and the procedure by which it was produced. The aim is that any reader or other system can check the statement independently, without having to rely on the Initiative. Every manuscript record includes a link back to the source at the holding institution or in its catalogue.

4. Article 4: Limits on religious content

   The Initiative's work is philological and documentary. Its tools issue no fatwas, religious rulings or theological assessments, do not rank schools of law and pass no verdict on hadith; a text that is not found is reported in the wording set out in guardrail 2. Qur’anic text is shown only verbatim from a named standard edition of the Qur’an. Where other systems are measured, only citation fidelity is assessed. Guardrails 1, 2, 3 and 10 set out these limits in detail.

5. Article 5: Rights of holding institutions

   Manuscripts and texts remain in the care of the institutions that hold them, and the Initiative does not seek to take possession of them or to control access to them. The Initiative links back to the source and names the holding institution wherever a manuscript record is shown, and manuscript images are displayed from that institution's own servers using open standards such as IIIF. An institution's data is used only under its licence or with its consent, and any project to reunite dispersed holdings digitally is carried out only together with the institutions and parties concerned.

6. Article 6: Sovereign operation

   The institution using a tool decides which model it relies on and where that model runs, and its data stays under its control. The Initiative states clearly where each of its tools runs and which model it uses, whether on the institution's own servers or with a cloud provider. The Citation Fidelity Standard is intended to let every operator measure its own model on its own infrastructure, and the Initiative publishes no ranking of countries.

7. Article 7: Security and integrity

   Text corpora, indexes and checking rules are protected against manipulation, because a small alteration to an index can produce a false attribution that recurs in many later answers. Changes to them are logged, so that it is possible to see what changed, when, and by which procedure. Tools are designed so that an independent reviewer can verify their integrity.

8. Article 8: Transparency about errors

   The Initiative publishes the error rates and known limitations of its tools, and it states limitations before it announces results. No figure on the performance of a tool is published without a methods report that explains how and when it was measured. Errors that come to light are corrected openly, and every correction is entered in a public corrections log.

9. Article 9: Independence

   The Initiative discloses where its funding comes from. It accepts no more from any single funder than a ceiling that will be set and published before any third-party funding is accepted, and it accepts no funding that requires particular results or gives the funder influence over them. Conflicts of interest are disclosed in a public register of interests, and anyone with an interest in a decision takes no part in it. The Initiative remains neutral between states and between schools of law.

10. Article 10: Review and revision

    The Charter carries a version number, and every change is entered in the change log with its date and content. Every substantive change is preceded by a period of public comment. Version 1.0, and every substantive change after it, requires the approval of the Academic Advisory Board, which has not yet been established; until it is, the Initiative applies the current draft to its own work.

Arabic Language and AI Methods and Results

Frame of reference

This Charter takes account of the Riyadh Charter for Artificial Intelligence in the Islamic World, presented by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) and the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) at the GAIN Summit in Riyadh on 11 September 2024.

The Initiative is not a party to the Riyadh Charter and does not claim that either organisation endorses its work or this Charter. The Riyadh Charter is explicitly grounded in Islamic values. This Charter is deliberately narrower: it confines itself to philological and documentary questions and leaves all others to those qualified to address them.

The Charter also takes account of the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), in particular the transparency obligations in Article 50, which have applied since 2 August 2026; of AI regulation in the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council; and of the scholarly discussion on trustworthy AI in cultural heritage. These references are combined on purpose, so that the Charter can be read in the Arab and Islamic world and in Europe alike, without being seen as belonging to any one side.

Commenting on the draft

This draft will be open for public comment for eight weeks from the date on which it is made public. Start and end dates: 15 September 2026 to 10 November 2026.

Comments may be sent by email to: info@arabian-service.com. It is helpful if a comment names the article or guardrail it refers to and, where possible, proposes alternative wording.

Rules for comments

• Comments should be factual and relate to the text of the Charter.
• Disputed religious questions are not discussed; they lie outside the scope of the Charter.
• Personal attacks are not accepted.
• A comment is published only with its author's consent, with or without their name, as they prefer.
• The Initiative replies to every comment within ten working days of receiving it.

At this stage, the Founder of the Initiative decides disputed cases under these rules. This task will pass to the Academic Advisory Board once it has been established.

Contact Privacy

Status of the draft

Open Specialist review: the external specialist who will review the draft before publication has not yet been named.

In progress Public comment period: eight weeks, from 15 September 2026 to 10 November 2026.

Planned Version 1.0: after the comment period, and with the approval of the Academic Advisory Board once it has been established.

Change log

Each version of the Charter is recorded here with its date and a summary of what changed.

Governance Disclosure