Should Your Business Have an AI Usage Policy? Yes, But Not All Policies Are Equally Effective

At Nazareth Bonifacino Law, we believe that innovation must be guided by responsible intention. That’s why when we decided to incorporate AI into our practice, we chose to create and implement an AI usage policy – a set of guidelines that governs how AI can be used in our work while protecting client confidentiality, upholding ethical standards, and staying true to our values.

No matter your industry or size of business, if you are considering adopting AI tools for your workplace or are already using them, we recommend having an AI usage policy in place. In this article, we offer guidance on what to consider when writing an effective AI usage policy for your business.

Why an AI Usage Policy Matters

Responsible Innovation: A strong AI usage policy ensures that innovation aligns with legal, ethical, and operational standards.

Your Employees Are Already Using AI: A clear AI usage policy keeps employees accountable and offers guardrails they can work within.

Staying Competitive: An AI policy enables smart, strategic use – improving speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, which all help your business keep pace and compete in the marketplace.

Providing Value to Clients: AI that is governed by a usage policy can reduce overhead, save time, and increase efficiency, which can lead to time and cost savings for your clients as well as make more time for the 1:1 interactions that clients value.

Increasing Adoption: An AI usage policy signals to employees that responsible use of AI is not only permitted but supported and encouraged.

Putting Ethics First in an AI Usage Policy

AI offers tremendous potential but with that potential comes great responsibility for how to ethically use the technology. An effective AI usage policy needs to be guided by ethics first:

Confidentiality: Never input sensitive or client-identifiable information into an AI tool without safeguards.

Accuracy Requires Oversight: AI can help draft and analyze, but human review and discernment are essential to avoid mistakes.

Supervision of Work: Work product generated with AI must be properly supervised.

Disclosure of AI Usage: Be honest about how your business uses AI – this transparency builds trust, and may even be required by rules of professional ethics applicable to your industry.

Billing and Cost Recovery: Define your approach to how AI usage is reflected in billing.

The Essentials of an Effective AI Policy

When crafting your AI usage policy, we recommend your business consider these essentials:

Bias Mitigation: Implement procedures to review outputs for fairness and neutrality.

Data Security: Define how and where AI tools can be used, and ensure they meet your cybersecurity standards.

Incident Response: Ensure your AI usage policy outlines your process for handling AI errors swiftly and transparently.

Client Consent: If the use of AI materially impacts the substance of client work, disclose the use of AI with your clients up front and secure their written consent.