When do your employees need to disclose their use of ChatGPT?

This content was not created with the assistance of generative AI.

Could that sentence (or its inverse) stamp the bottom of a pitch presentation to clients, a draft memo to your boss, or the final slide of a deck presented to shareholders? As ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies provide a helping hand to employees, HR teams are grappling with policies regarding its use, including disclosure.

Some companies have banned or restricted employees from the tech. Others are embracing the possibilities the tech can offer to employee productivity and see it as a tool to boost productivity.

As HR teams develop company policies governing generative AI use, they need to consider whether employees need to come clean about the assist.

“Over the next couple years, I think every single organization in every industry is going to have to come to a crossroads as to how their organization is really going to standardize…the use of generative AI…depending on the type of work they do for their clients,” Christie Lindor, Bentley University professor and CEO of DE&I firm Tessi Consulting, said. “One of the biggest questions is around, ‘Should I disclose or not disclose?’”

Lindor helps companies assess AI use, making sure it’s aligned with their DE&I strategies, and she said how she advises companies on disclosure is “industry dependent.”

“If you are giving any sort of advice or guidance, creating any type of strategic work, any type of high-level guidance where your clients, partners, [or] vendors are consuming information,” she said, “I think the responsible thing to do…is to disclose.”

If a call center is using generative AI to improve customer service scripts, disclosure may not be necessary, she added.

Lindor said AI policy is evolving rapidly, but currently recommends that companies use one of the following statements:

• No generative AI was used to create this product.
• This content was created with the assistance of generative AI.
• Generative AI produced this content.

“Disclosure is one thing, but the working assumption is that if you do disclose, are consumers savvy enough to really understand the implications? I think that is still an open question,” she said. “This is just another amazing tool. It’s just people really [need an] understanding [of] the benefits, but also being mindful of its limitations.”