Guide to Creating an AI Policy for Your Business

April 24, 2025 By Karen Layman, aka Karen

Artificial Intelligence can be a really helpful tool to use. However, it’s important to recognize certain issues surrounding AI usage in the workplace. Implementing an AI policy with clear guidelines can help make sure everyone at your company is on the same page on how and when to use it. If you already use AI or have been considering using it, here is a guide for why you should have an AI policy and some tips for creating an AI policy for your workplace:

4 Reasons You Should Have an AI Policy

AI is rapidly gaining popularity and is one of the most popular business, marketing, and ecommerce trends right now. AI has some really helpful benefits in the workplace, but it also poses some risks.

Sometimes, AI gives out incorrect information or may even manipulate information. It may also collect personal or sensitive data about employees or customers. AI should be following all regulations when it comes to private data and if it doesn’t, it could open your company up to potential lawsuits, which may damage your reputation.

Creating an AI usage policy can help you and your business use AI responsibly and ethically. Here are a few of the reasons why you should have an AI policy:

1. To Comply With Regulations and Laws

As AI has developed, so have laws and regulations surrounding its use, especially with protecting data privacy and intellectual property. If you don’t have an AI policy set in place, you may end up accidentally breaking the law. If this happens, you may encounter potential lawsuits or other penalties. Having specific guidelines in place can help you avoid headaches and legal issues.

2. To Ensure Security and Privacy

AI systems need to have access to a large amount of data to function. Sometimes, the data may include sensitive information. Without proper guidelines, users may unknowingly input potentially sensitive data into the AI algorithms. If this happens, this data can be exposed to a data breach, or it may be accessed by an unauthorized user.

Your AI guidelines will be in place to not only protect your customers’ data, but to protect your employees and company, too. If your company is vulnerable to a data leak, you risk damaging your company’s reputation. A well-defined AI policy can help with your online reputation management because it will guide employees on how to safely collect and process data. This will help reduce the risks of accidental data breaches, protecting both customers and employees.

3. To Establish Ethical Usage

AI has a lot of potential, but it’s not always positive or ethical to use it or rely on it. AI may produce inaccurate content or make inappropriate decisions. To use AI ethically, you need a policy that has clear specifications on how to use AI so that it helps your company rather than harming your customers and employees, or your reputation.

It’s important to establish firm specifications on how to use AI ethically, but a recent study shows that nearly 75% of companies have not implemented AI ethics. This will help inform your company when making decisions that are transparent and fair.

4. To Reduce Bias and Increase Inclusivity

AI models need to be trained, and because of that, they are only as reliable as the data they’re given. If that data is biased, the information they give out will be, too. This could lead to discrimination based on factors like age, gender, or race.

A detailed AI policy should outline proper and regular auditing of AI content and bias, which can help ensure a fairer output. Not thinking about inclusivity is a common public relations mistake, so you need to make sure your AI models are learning to be inclusive from the information you are inputting.

How to Write An AI Policy For Your Business

Whether your business has already implemented AI or is interested in using it in the future, having a detailed AI policy is crucial. Here’s how to write an AI policy for your business:

1. Form a Committee

To write a well-rounded AI policy, you need a few different perspectives and expertise. You may even want to include board members, if applicable, to help write the policy. Anyone on this committee should have a good foundational knowledge of AI and how it works. They should also understand the benefits and risks of using AI in the workplace.

2. Define Your Objectives

Think about why your business might want to use AI or how your business will benefit from using AI. Do some research so you have a good grasp on where AI might be the most effective in your workplace. This can help you build out a better AI guidelines policy.

These objectives might include things like improving efficiency, cutting back on costs, or even improving experiences with your customers. It may even help improve your response time for better customer service.

3. Include Ethical Considerations

AI can be very helpful in the workplace, but some ethics surround its usage. When writing your AI policy, you need to put a lot of thought into how ethics should shape your policy. For example, no one should be putting private, personal, or proprietary data into public AI tools. Even with private internal AI tools, if you deal with any personal data, either with your employees or customers, you need to figure out how you will protect that data.

Just like there are cognitive biases that can affect marketing, AI can also have biases. This can be a problem when using AI for hiring and employment processes. Your policy needs to discuss how you will check biases and make sure your work environment remains inclusive.

4. Research Laws and Regulations

There are some laws in place for AI usage, especially surrounding protecting personal data. To stay compliant, your policy must outline those regulations. Failing to do so may set you up for headaches and even legal problems down the road.

5. Define Protocols For Usage

Make sure your guide explains in depth how AI can be used and should be used in your business. If necessary, indicate positions or departments that may or may not use AI and why. This transparency can help avoid future conflicts over AI usage.

You should also define which AI tools are allowed in the workplace. There are quite a few different tools, so be sure you know which ones are best for your business. Maybe you only want AI tools that can check for grammar and punctuation mistakes. There are some AI content marketing tools to try that can be useful as long as you use them in the way your policy instructs.

6. Make Sure You Include Regular Audits

Audits are a way to evaluate how a business or process is working. Just like you should be doing a social media audit to review your social media marketing efforts, your policy should mention performing regular audits that review your AI usage and performance.

These audits should confirm that your usage is ethical. You should also go over your guidelines semi-regularly to make sure they still effectively guide AI usage. If you find something in your policy that isn’t working, take the time to think through the issue and then rewrite that part of your policy.

7. Implement the Policy

Once your guidelines are complete, they need to be communicated throughout your business to all employees and any stakeholders, if necessary. This is something that needs to be well thought out and communicated clearly. You may also want to consider providing education or training for your employees. Making sure your employees are well educated and trained on how and why to use AI in the workplace will help them use it ethically.

This is just an overview of a guide to creating an AI policy. Using AI can be a helpful tool, but it’s important to use it ethically and responsibly. This will help protect you and your company from any potential headaches in the future.