This policy is inspired by Wired Magazine, as we think their policy strikes the right balance between providing essential quality guarantees and leveraging GenAI’s efficiency gains.
Here we explain exactly how we do and don’t use generative AI (GenAI).
We do not submit content with text generated by AI
This means that the strategy documents, web copy, landing pages, email marketing, blog posts, articles, infographics, video scripts, guides, whitepapers, eBooks, reports, brochures, direct mail, newsletters, case studies and training materials we write – are written by humans.
Our expertise, creativity and ability to home in on the right messages are key to the value we add. Because that means you cut through – and don’t end up sounding like everyone else. By design, GenAI generates text based on training from content already out there…so you’re at risk of sounding like everyone else.
And just to be clear, we always do our best to ensure all facts and statements in our work are true, that it’s free of errors and omissions, and that it doesn’t infringe upon any copyright or other right of a third party. We don’t trust GenAI to do that – it’s too prone to hallucinations, bias and error.
We may use AI for proofreading
We’re talking about tools like Grammarly. It acts as another set of eyes alongside the human ones and the in-built word processor spelling and grammar checks. We are not slaves to Grammarly suggestions by any means (we reject lots of them because they’re not quite right for the sentence nuance or context). But it’s great at spotting a missing word or words that are repeated too often.
We do not use tools like Grammarly for projects involving confidential information.
Please let us know if you’d prefer we not use these tools in our proofreading process for your project.
We may use AI for brainstorming, research and writing support
GenAI can be great for coming up with ideas and new ways to phrase something. The human value-add (and what we’re great at) comes from being able to review ideas from various sources and pick out the best ones.
This is the same way we use tools like a thesaurus, swipe file or rhyming dictionary. It’s also the same way we use other internet sources to research or get creative inspiration, whether it’s looking at image libraries or reading publications/forums/review sites to spark ideas.
We may use AI to suggest headlines, keywords or short summary text based on content we’ve written (for example, social media posts, email subject lines or meta descriptions). If it involves research, we will always validate sources and cite where appropriate.
We may use AI tools for transcription
We’re talking about tools like Otter or the native tools in online meeting and webinar solutions. These tools make the note-taking process easier and provide a simple way to validate what was said while going through the writing process.