Generative AI (GenAI) is rapidly transforming the media ecosystem and the world at large, reshaping our culture and our conversations. While there is great potential in this technology, there are also risks. The survival of the documentary industry, in all of its power and promise to help us understand and interpret our history and our present, is contingent on maintaining a truthful and transparent relationship with viewers.

Committed to this ideal, the Archival Producers Alliance set as our first task to develop guidelines in the responsible use of this revolutionary technology. We are offering them as an free resource to the documentary community in hopes that it will help filmmakers who are using, or considering using, GenAI in their work to ground their decisions in the values the documentary community has long held.