Generative AI policy

Our policy puts rules in place to ensure that generative AI applications are used by employees in a controlled and responsible way. This should help to maximise the benefits of the technology and minimise the risks.

pros and cons

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications have the potential to transform the way some employees work. They may increase productivity and efficiency, foster innovation, accelerate the development of your products/services and improve your competitiveness. However, their use comes with a number of legal risks and challenges, for example, relating to information inaccuracy or “hallucinations”, copyright infringement, breach of data protection or confidentiality laws and bias and discrimination. Therefore, if you haven’t already done so, you should put in place our Generative AI Policy.

Policy contents

The purpose of our policy is to control the extent to which staff can use generative AI for work purposes, so that you can maximise its benefits but minimise the legal risks. It therefore covers such matters as: what generative AI is; what generative AI applications are authorised for use in the workplace; what are the permitted and prohibited use cases in relation to work-related activities; to what extent employees can use generative AI at work for personal purposes; your rules surrounding the use of generative AI and your right to monitor (you may need to complete a data protection impact assessment if a new type of monitoring is being considered). The rules on the use of AI are intended to address the legal risks, for example, by ensuring employees don’t share any personal data or confidential business information with the technology, they take steps to minimise the risk of copyright infringement and they carefully check the outputs for accuracy and bias.

Policy drafting

You’ll need to tailor our policy to suit the needs of your business, as it’s your choice what generative AI applications you want to authorise and what work-related activities your employees can use them for (it may be useful for you to first do a risk assessment here). Do keep your policy under regular review though as the technology develops. If you want to ban the use of generative AI for work-related activities, our policy isn’t appropriate - you’ll need to make your ban clear to staff.