PUCPR and 404 Innovation Studio have launched the Humanitas Code and the 'Never Stop Thinking' campaign in Brazil. The initiative offers a free protocol for use in conversations with artificial intelligence.
Designed to be pasted at the start of an interaction with AI systems including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, the code contains 12 articles and five final clauses intended to make AI systems cite sources, present alternative perspectives and return authorship to the user.
The project comes from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, known as PUCPR, in partnership with the São Paulo-based creative business 404 Innovation Studio. The organisations said the protocol was tested through a range of evaluation scenarios, including A/B tests across different AI models, to assess whether it could produce consistent behavioural changes across use cases.
The initiative is framed around concerns that widespread AI use could weaken independent human judgement. It also draws on themes set out in Magnifica Humanitas, an encyclical by Pope Leo XIV that called on Catholic educational institutions to preserve the desire to ask questions and guard against human thought being displaced by increasingly efficient machines.
The protocol was built as a public tool rather than a product restricted to the university community. PUCPR has more than 54,000 students, 17 Master's and Doctoral programmes, and around 1,800 researchers across campuses in Curitiba, Toledo and Londrina, as well as an international hub in Florence.
For the university, the project links AI use to its wider educational mission.
"The question we kept coming back to wasn't what AI will do to work; it was what is AI doing to thinking. For a university whose mission for nearly 70 years has been to shape people who think, that question isn't academic. The Humanitas Code is our answer. We believe in AI, and we also believe the final decision has always belonged to the human. We want to keep it that way," said Cristina Pastore, Director of Brand and Future, PUCPR.
404 Innovation Studio said it developed the work against a backdrop of intense public discussion about artificial intelligence. The studio is part of Galeria Holding, a Latin American network of creative companies.
"The use of AI is going to change our lives, and we need to give people tools that help them build a better relationship with these technologies. The Humanitas Code is a piece of code, from a university, given away to the public, that changes the behavior of the AI in front of you. To our knowledge, it's among the first examples of a brand building cognitive protection directly into an AI tool for the person using it," said Rafael Caldeira, Co-Founder, 404 Innovation Studio.
How it was built
The Humanitas Code was developed by university professors and researchers alongside outside specialists, including Ronaldo Lemos, a Brazilian lawyer, professor and technology researcher known for his role in the Marco Civil da Internet, and Paulo Aguiar, an educator and creative consultant specialising in generative AI.
Lemos said the protocol's significance lies in its practical use during ordinary interactions with AI tools, rather than in broad debate about the technology.
"What makes the Humanitas Code particularly interesting, beyond the fact that there are no similar precedents in the world, is that it transforms the responsible use of artificial intelligence into a tool embedded in our everyday interaction with technology. Rather than simply discussing the future of AI, we have created mechanisms to influence this relationship in the present," said Lemos.
Aguiar similarly emphasised how the protocol translates general principles into user actions.
"And it is precisely this practical application that makes the Code relevant: transforming principles of responsibility and ethics into guidelines for the choices and interactions we make with AI every day," said Aguiar.
Campaign rollout
The launch is backed by a broad advertising push across television, radio, cinema, outdoor media and digital placements. The organisations said the digital effort also includes social platform content and a dedicated page where users can copy, install and share the protocol.
The communications push reflects a wider effort to place the project in the mainstream debate around artificial intelligence, where universities, policymakers and technology companies are all competing to shape rules for adoption and use. By tying the code to questions of authorship, source attribution and exposure to competing viewpoints, the initiative aims to intervene at the level of day-to-day prompts rather than legislation or platform policy.
It also marks a notable move by a university into the design of practical AI behaviour guidelines for public use. Much of the debate over AI safeguards has centred on governments, model developers and corporate procurement standards, while educational institutions have more often focused on academic integrity and classroom rules.
In this case, PUCPR is presenting a framework that can be used beyond campus. The approach may appeal to users seeking more transparent AI outputs, particularly at a time when concerns over hallucinations, unattributed synthesis and over-reliance on generated text have become central to public discussion of the technology.
The Humanitas Code is free for anyone to install and share.