Ethics and Intended Use

Patina removes generic AI-writing packaging while preserving the author's intended meaning. It is an editing aid, not a provenance oracle.

Patina is for

• Post-AI editing: cleaning drafts that the author is permitted to create with AI assistance.
• Audit trails: showing which patterns were flagged and why a rewrite changed them.
• Voice preservation: making prose sound less templated without changing claims, numbers, polarity, or causation.
• False-positive review: helping maintainers and editors discuss suspicious passages without accusing a writer.
• Contributor research: improving pattern packs, fixtures, and benchmark methodology in public.

Patina is not for

• Academic honor-code evasion. If a school, journal, or publisher requires disclosure, patina does not remove that obligation.
• Publisher or workplace AI-disclosure circumvention. A cleaner sentence is not evidence that AI was not used.
• Plagiarism laundering. Rewriting copied text does not make it yours.
• Detector-bypass guarantees. Scores are editing signals with false positives and false negatives, not guarantees against Turnitin, GPTZero, Originality, or any other detector.
• Authorship accusation. Do not use patina output or score reports as proof that a person used AI.

What the score means

The AI-likeness score estimates how many known surface patterns appear in a text. It is useful for editing prioritization. It is not a moral judgment, authorship proof, or policy-compliance certificate.

Disclosure stance

If a policy asks whether AI assisted the writing, answer that policy honestly. Patina can help make allowed AI-assisted drafts clearer and more faithful to the author's intent, but it cannot convert AI-assisted work into “originally human” work under policies that define originality by process.