The AI Builder Challenge 2026 Responsible AI and Community Code of Conduct explains global expectations for responsible building, respectful participation, privacy, security, project integrity, fair voting, reporting, and enforcement. It is published for reference and requires no separate acceptance, checkbox, or consent.
The AI Builder Challenge 2026 Code of Conduct covers responsible AI, respectful participation, privacy, security, project integrity, fair voting, reporting, and enforcement.
Purpose and scope: The AI Builder Challenge 2026 Responsible AI and Community Code of Conduct sets global expectations for participants, mentors, experts, judges, and organizers. It covers respectful participation and responsible-AI safeguards. The Challenge overview and FAQ describe current eligibility, timing, submission, judging, voting, and award mechanics. The Code adds no registration or submission field and requires no separate acceptance or consent.
Community conduct: Treat people with respect, communicate professionally, welcome differences in experience and background, give constructive good-faith feedback, respect privacy and intellectual property, and help maintain spaces free from harassment, intimidation, discrimination, threats, doxxing, unwanted sexual conduct, deliberate humiliation, and persistent disruption.
Responsible AI: The Challenge standard applies globally. Legal obligations depend on the countries and markets involved, the team's role, the type and use of the system, and any applicable exemption. The EU AI Act is one reference framework and is not a blanket requirement for non-EU participants. Projects must not implement manipulative practices, exploitation of vulnerabilities, social scoring, profiling-only predictive policing, untargeted facial-image scraping, prohibited emotion recognition or biometric categorization, non-consensual intimate material, child sexual abuse material, or an equivalent unacceptable practice.
Transparency and human-centered design: Tell users when they are interacting with AI unless that is obvious, explain the role of AI, identify principal models or technologies, state important limitations, and label significant AI-generated or manipulated content. Consider affected people, foreseeable consequences, fairness across relevant groups and languages, accessibility, sustainability, and whether AI is the right tool.
Privacy, safety, and security: Prefer synthetic, anonymized, or openly licensed test data. Use personal data only with an appropriate legal basis and any required consent. Do not expose confidential data or credentials. Treat input and retrieved content as untrusted, test for harmful or unsafe output, disclose important limitations, and keep meaningful human review where decisions may significantly affect rights, safety, opportunities, or wellbeing.
Integrity and fair competition: Follow third-party licenses and terms, credit significant components, disclose pre-existing work and AI coding tools, and represent honestly what works. Do not fabricate results, present prerecorded demos as live, plagiarize, create duplicate or automated voting accounts, buy or trade votes, coordinate vote swaps, automate votes, post bad-faith reviews, or influence judges outside the official process.
Reporting and enforcement: Report concerns privately to office@aibuildersnetwork.org or through the contact form. If a concern involves an organizer, contact office@womentech.net. The team aims to acknowledge reports within 48 hours, protects good-faith reporters from retaliation, uses non-conflicted reviewers, and may apply proportionate measures including warnings, content changes, evaluation removal, loss of award eligibility, removal from community spaces, or exclusion. Appeals may be submitted within three calendar days to office@aibuildersnetwork.org.
Optional self-check: Before submission, teams can review purpose and affected users, prohibited practices, AI disclosures, data handling, security, testing, human oversight, fairness, working-demo integrity, attribution, and pre-existing work. The checklist is not collected, scored, or required as a separate consent step. The Code is not legal advice.