Generative AI Policy  Document

Introduction

1. Why We Have This Policy

We want everyone at LBCA to use AI wisely. We believe we can take advantage of AI’s benefits while acknowledging its problems. This policy will help us manage our use of AI to minimize the risks while enjoying those benefits. 

We fully acknowledge that AI may include: 

  • Misinformation or inaccuracies
  • Harmful bias
  • Unvetted or unclear sources
  • Illegal use of proprietary, copyrighted, and private information

These problems make compliance with this policy all the more important.

2. Who This Policy Applies To

This policy applies to everyone working or volunteering at LBCA who uses generative AI to create or share content for LBCA uses.

3. Core Requirements of Using AI

Under no circumstances should you ever input to AI any confidential or private information about our organization or any of the people associated with it, including staff, board members, or volunteers. You should assume that anything included in an AI prompt is now public information and may become part of the AI’s “learning material.”

While one benefit of using AI is saving time, if you use the tool, you must also commit the time to the following activities: 

Carefully reviewing the content for embedded bias

Fact-checking any declarations, statements, or findings presented by AI. Be skeptical of words like best, worst, should, must, and the like. 

For “original” content over a few hundred words, run it through a plagiarism or copyright infringement checker–Grammarly is a good source for this.

Editing the content to match the voice, style, and tone guidance of LBCA.

Under no circumstances is it appropriate to blame the AI for what may ultimately be revealed as bad or mistaken content. If we use the tool, we must take full responsibility for using it and what we publish after using it.

4. Approved AI Tools

LBCA approves the use of the following AI tools within the framework of this policy. If you want to use a tool not listed here, please contact the IT Director or Communications Chair first to begin the discussion.

  • Canva
  • Grammarly
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude

5. Approved Uses of AI to Create Written Copy

  • The following uses of AI are acceptable at LBCA without attribution to the AI. 
  • To write first drafts of content based on your prompts, but only if you are committed to substantively editing the draft, adding your own original material (e.g. quotes, stories, statistics), and adjusting the language to reflect the voice, style, and tone of LBCA. 
  • To help you brainstorm multiple versions of subject lines, headlines, and the like from which you will pick and edit the best. 
  • To help you further elaborate on your ideas. For example, you want to draft a Top 10 list, but you only have five good points. You ask AI to brainstorm the rest for you. 
  • To repurpose content that has already been approved, such as turning a blog post into multiple social media posts. 
  • To draft shorter summaries of longer documents.
  • To translate approved content into another language, only if reviewed by a native speaker of that language. 
  • To transcribe video and audio recordings only if the transcript is reviewed and edited before publication.
  • Note:  We do not recommend using AI to create substantial content without significant human editing. If AI writes the article, language such as “Content Reviewed by LBCA Staff or Content Aggregated and Published by LBCA Staff” should be included.

6. Approved Uses of AI to Create Visual Content

  • Using AI to create visual content such as photography and realistic artwork has many additional issues. For example, viewers of that content are likelier to believe the photograph is of real people, taken by a photographer on our staff in real settings and contexts. 
  • Therefore, the level of disclosure for using AI to create images is higher.
  • Depending on the publication channel, the following disclosure must appear in the same area as the photograph. On social media, it may appear as the last line of the post. On the website, it can appear as the last line of the photo caption or at the end of the post. In direct mail, it can appear in italics, below the P.S.

7. Specific Use Cases at LBCA

We can use AI tools for these purposes: 

  • Social Media Posts
  • Headlines
  • Press Releases
  • Rough Drafts
  • SEO Help

Examples:

  • We use ChatGPT as a collaborative tool to structure the skeleton of new blog content, including headings and titles. We may also use it for some content development, but we have found that human-generated text is most effective for our work.
  • We use ChatGPT to review alternative headlines and subject lines for emails which we test or select and then amend.
  • We don’t use ChatGPT to generate full-body copy for emails, but we may use it to structure emails.
  • We use ChatGPT to generate alternative headlines for social media, e.g. LinkedIn updates and to add Emojis to these. We don’t see the value of using ChatGPT to write body copy since generally it’s not authentic and editing time takes longer than original content.
  • We mainly see Generative AI tools as part of a collaborative writing process between the author and AI. We use the free AI tool Grammarly to review copy and extensions to check links.

We will not use AI for these purposes: 

  • Final Content

Additional Source Material

Nonprofit Marketing Guide used the following sources to help create this worksheet: 

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/ai-use-policy

https://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/ai-marketing-policy-example

https://thezoeteam.com/blog/zoe-marketing-ai-policy-principles

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