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Welcome to the Friday edition of our newsletter. We spend Fridays going deeper into tools and trends related to generative AI (and Tuesdays sharing news updates). This week Professor Snider discusses AI disclosure.
When should you disclose that you used AI?
AI is everywhere these days. It can help you write clearer emails, create the first draft of a project proposal, find discrepancies in a spreadsheet and design an invitation to your kid's birthday party.
So the question often comes up when we work with people: when do I need to admit to people that I used AI?
The honest answer is "it depends." But that's a lousy answer to leave you with. So today we're sharing a framework to make this call, and a simple way to think it through before you hit send.
Start with how much AI actually did
Not all AI use is the same. In the Drake University School of Journalism and Mass Communication, we built a five-level scale for AI use on assignments, and the same thinking can apply in business. Here's the generalized version:
Level 1: AI as a tool. You're using things like spell check, grammar suggestions, autocomplete. Nobody discloses this and nobody expects you to, even if it uses AI.
Level 2: AI as a brainstorming partner. You used AI to generate ideas, outline options or pressure-test your thinking. The final work is yours.
Level 3: AI as a drafter. AI wrote a first version and you substantially (or even slightly) revised it. Your judgment shaped the final product, but AI did the heavy lifting.
Level 4: AI as the writer. AI produced most of the content and you edited lightly. You reviewed it, but you didn't rebuild it.
Level 5: AI as the author. AI created it, you approved it (or sometimes didn't even read it). This could be things like auto-generated summaries or chatbot responses.
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The three questions that settle it
Once you know your level, ask these three questions:
Would the audience feel misled if they found out it was written by AI? A customer reading a "personal note" from your CEO expects a human wrote it. A customer reading a product FAQ does not care. If discovery would damage trust, disclose that you used AI.
Is the content presented as someone's original thinking or expertise? A bylined article, a testimonial or a thought leadership post carry an implicit claim that a person created them. Levels 4 and 5 likely need disclosure here for most people to be comfortable. Levels 1-3 usually don't.
Does a rule already answer this for you? This list is growing fast. Meta now labels images created or edited with generative AI. Some industries (legal, healthcare, financial services) have their own requirements in this area. Check the rules before you assume.
A general rule
Levels 1 and 2: no disclosure needed.
Level 3: disclose when the content claims to be someone's original expertise.
Levels 4 and 5: disclose almost always.
One caveat here is that some of you have extensively trained your AI models to be an extension of you. Or maybe your prompt really did the heavy lifting, but not the actual writing. These create more gray area.
And one more thing that trips people up – when you do cite sources, cite the original source, not the AI tool. "According to ChatGPT" is not a citation. If AI helped you find a stat, track down where that stat actually came from and cite that.
The takeaway
Disclosure isn't about confessing something shameful. It's about protecting trust with your audience. The companies getting this right aren't hiding their AI use – they're being matter-of-fact about it and moving on.
Where does your organization draw the line? I wrote a companion LinkedIn post about this. Leave your thoughts there.
