READ Open Manifesto on Design and Artificial Intelligence (2025)

In September 2025 the Red Espanola de Asociaciones de Diseno, through its working group on good professional practice, presented an open manifesto on the ethical coexistence of design and artificial intelligence. It is version 1.0, dated July 2025, and was launched publicly on 19 September at La Nave Nodriza in Madrid. It follows the same network's 2022 code of ethics, and draws on it directly.

The manifesto's stated objective is to protect human creativity as the central and irreplaceable axis of design, recognising the potential of artificial intelligence as a complementary tool and not as a substitute for the design professional's critical and expressive thinking. Around that it sets three further positions: an inclusive and responsible use that guarantees equitable access and avoids biases that perpetuate inequalities; transparency and traceability in the creative process; and, in public procurement specifically, a call to declare the use of artificial intelligence in projects so that ethics, legality and accountability can be assessed.

Structurally it is reported to hold 43 statements grouped into six areas: the human being, legislation, sustainability, the commissioning of design, traceability and transparency, and the right to algorithmic reversibility. That last area is the one with the fewest parallels elsewhere. It is articulated around fourteen values drawn from the network's own code of ethics and from UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. It was written with named collaborators including the Spanish Federation of UNESCO Associations and Clubs and the digitalisation office of the trade union UGT, and it is published in the co-official languages of the Spanish state and in English, with individuals and organisations able to adhere to it.

This record must carry a warning that the others do not. The manifesto itself was not obtained. Its own PDF, a mirror copy of that PDF, the network's manifesto landing page and the network's press-release page all returned nothing when fetched. Everything above comes from a press release published by DAG, the Galician design association and a member of the network, describing its own network's document. None of the 43 statements has been read, and none is quoted or paraphrased here. Anyone who needs the manifesto's actual content should obtain the PDF before relying on this summary.

One inconsistency surfaced in that secondary account and is recorded rather than resolved. The press release attributes all fourteen values to the network's code of ethics. The code, which was read in full for this bank, names six inspiring values, with several of the other eight appearing in it as general principles rather than as values. The fourteen are therefore most likely a combination of the code's values, the code's principles and the UNESCO recommendation, but that is an inference and it is flagged as one.