The contents within IEEE Std 2840™ pertains to licenses which, by conforming to this standard, meaningfully engages with the spirit of responsible use of AI systems. In this regard, the standard is not intended to define what a license or contract is as these are well understood by legal systems across the world. Rather, licenses conforming to the IEEE Std 2840 standard shall adhere to and specify clauses that pertain to dimensions of use (i.e., capabilities, consequences, and areas of application) of specific technical artifacts.

For the purpose of establishing a standard for responsible AI licensing, this standard details the following:--Specified licensing scopes for AI, applications, models, and/or source code.--Definition and specification of the nature of the “required clauses” that need to be included in any IEEE Std 2840-compliant license.--Definition of the possibility of the provision of “additional clauses” by licensors.--Specification that and how a derivative work statement would be defined by licensors.--This standard does not mandate a naming convention of the license but recommends, as best practice, that the license suitably include the "RAIL-

The purpose of this document is to provide a standard for developing responsible-use licenses for AI systems that are applications, models, source code, or combinations thereof.