Before You Write a Single AI Rule

Your team is already using AI. Maybe they draft emails with it, summarize meeting notes, or create social media captions. Some of this happens with your knowledge, but a lot of it doesn’t. Without a shared set of guidelines, every person on your team is making their own decisions about how to use AI. That’s where things can get risky, for example:

• Someone pastes a client’s contact list into a free AI tool, exposing private information to a platform the business hasn’t approved

• A social post goes live with a claim nobody checked

• A team member posts a personal message to your community that’s supposed to sound like you, but it obviously reads like AI

What an AI Use Policy Does & Why Your Team Needs One

An AI use policy is a working guide that tells people what they can do, what needs review, and what’s off-limits. It gives your team a short, shared reference for how to use AI in your business. It helps prevent:

• Privacy breaches

• Inaccurate or off-brand output

• Unclear accountability

• Inconsistent use across the team

By the end of this workshop, you'll have a first draft of your AI use policy, ready to share with your team. Specifically, you’ll have:

• A clear scope statement that defines who the policy covers and what work it applies to

• A set of ethical principles your team can use to make AI decisions on the spot

• A privacy rule that spells out what information must never go into an AI tool

• A classified task list with named reviewers and approvers for every task that needs them

• A disclosure rule, escalation process, and named policy owner

• A rollout plan and introduction message, ready to send

At the end of each step in the workshop, you’ll complete a set of action steps that go directly into the AI Use Policy Template included with this workshop. By the time you reach the final step, every section of that template will be filled in.

Throughout the workshop, you'll see examples from Kiskadee Creative, a small marketing agency with a team of five. Their decisions will show you how the process works before you develop your own AI use policy.

Your completed policy is a working first draft. You can introduce it this week and update it as your team’s AI use grows.

Action Steps:

1. Complete section 1 of the AI Use Policy Template.

   1. Write your purpose statement in Section 1.1 using the sentence starter provided.

   2. Complete Section 1.2 of the template by deciding who the policy applies to, what kinds of work it covers, and whether it includes contractors or collaborators.

Test Your Own Policy: Read your purpose statement back. Would a team member reading it understand why this policy exists? If not, make it more specific before continuing.