AI tools save real time on drafting, summarising and tidying up. The risk is not the robot. It is handing a client's confidential work to a company you have no contract with. Here are the five rules we give every team we look after.
In short
Use approved tools, signed in with a work account.
Keep contracts, pricing, personal details and embargoed work out of free tools entirely.
Whoever sends it owns it. AI drafts, you check.
1. Work account, approved tool
Two colleagues ask the same AI assistant to tidy a client brief. One is signed in with a personal free account, the other with a work account. Only one has kept the brief inside the business.
A work account on an approved tool keeps what you type inside the business and out of model training. A personal or free account can keep it, show it to staff at the provider, and train on it. So pick the tools, pay for the business plan, and write the list down where people can find it.
2. Decide what never goes in
A long client contract arrives at 4.55pm with "can you pull out the key terms?" The free app on someone's phone would do it in seconds. It would also breach the confidentiality clause in that contract.
In a personal or free tool, no client or company material goes in at all. Even in an approved tool, pause before adding contracts and pricing, personal details, unreleased work, financial data, or anything under an NDA or a client's "no AI" request.
3. Record with your work tools
Free AI note-takers send recordings and transcripts to services nobody has reviewed. The recording and notes built into your work Teams, Zoom or Meet account are fine, as long as everyone on the call knows. Browser extensions that "read all your data on all websites" do exactly that, so leave those to IT.
4. Expect better scams
Voices and writing styles can now be copied from a few seconds of audio or a handful of emails. The rule for money has not changed: payments, new payees and bank changes are checked by calling a number you already hold.
5. You are still the author
AI output is a draft. It sounds confident whether or not it is right, and it can invent facts and sources. Check every fact, figure and name before it goes out, and check usage rights before generated images go anywhere near a client.
Make it easy to own up
Something went into the wrong tool? The fix is fast if people say so quickly. Make it clear that reporting a mistake is never penalised. Deleting the chat does not undo what was sent.
Want this set up properly?
We write the AI policy, choose and lock down the tools, and train the team, with a short test at the end so you can show clients and auditors it was done. Talk to us, or read about AI and business systems for creative teams.