AI chatbots have been with us three years and one month (at least the kind that use large language models (LLMs) to communicate with natural-sounding words). Already norms are emerging in some professions for users to disclose how they use AI.
For example:
- Organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors created policies for disclosing AI use in scientific manuscripts.
- Some US lawyers are required to declare how AI tools are used for content presented in court, and the State Bar of California advises lawyers to tell clients when they intend to use AI during representation.
- Amazon requires book sellers to disclose whether their books are AI-generated.
AI disclosures in these fields are so beneficial that we should all be doing the same thing. So I’m starting a movement for everyone to embrace the norm.
Why we all need AI disclosures
We’re not all so-called “content creators.” But as professionals, we do “create content“ and we communicate with “content” — emails, phone calls, voicemail, texts, instant messages, video calls, and slide presentations. Some of us build websites, create charts and graphs, share spreadsheets, and create marketing materials.
All these communication acts and content types can be generated with AI tools.
As I argued in a recent column, the assumption that you’re using AI to create this stuff is growing. (I also had a great conversation with my Superintelligent podcast co-host, Emily Forlini, about disclosure and that conversation really clarified my thinking on the subject.)
In other words, even if you lovingly handcraft a PowerPoint presentation or provide a thoughtful and detailed reply to an email, other people will think you used AI.
There are many reasons to transparently disclose exactly how you’re using the technology.
Since most people will assume you’re using AI to generate everything, leading to suspicion and the judgment of your work as low value, disclosing exactly how you use AI will signal the quality or value of what you’re communicating. Here’s what I mean:
You can impress others about the quality of your work without AI. If you “do your own work” and don’t use AI to communicate with someone, you should make it clear you deserve credit for polished content, well-structured language, clear thinking, and all the rest.
You’re effectively asserting your value in a world where companies are looking to replace you with AI. High-performers are much better at their jobs than AI chatbots. By reminding everybody that your content and communication is coming from you — and not the AI tool they would replace you with — you might have a little more job security in a world where so many business leaders believe AI can replace people in the workplace.
You’d be providing leadership in how AI tools can be used effectively. Whether you’re communicating to subordinates, superiors or peers, you can constantly and subtly help others discover uses for AI and also find tools that you may have encountered. By advocating the norm and getting others to disclose their own use of AI, you can learn in the same way from others.
You’ll give others better context about what they’re getting from you. We live in a weird time where you get something from someone and you’re not sure what you’re looking at. Is this just AI slop? Or is it coming from the heart of the person who sent it? By constantly disclosing how you’ve used AI, you give others a sense of context and avoid the disorientation of a world in which so much content and communication is fake and AI generated.
You can mitigate algorithmic biases through external scrutiny. If you do use AI, the tools can insert biases into your communications that you don’t even recognize, so you’ll benefit from others pointing out any issues — and avoid blame for a bias you don’t share with the chatbot.
Finally, you’re demonstrating sensitivity to data privacy. When using AI tools to, for instance, reply to an email, you have to upload the words and that you’re replying to into a tool that could use uploads for training AI. If the person who created that content is legally prohibited from sharing data with AI training models, you’d be showing sensitivity toward privacy by disclosing you did not use any AI tool to read or respond to the email. (That includes data from other people, other companies, and your own company.)
These are just some of the reasons why you should disclose how you use AI in all of your professional content, creation, and communication.
Emerging best practices
The most obvious place to disclose AI use is in your email signature. Most of us operate on informal personal policies; for example, in my case, I never use AI in any way to write or reply to emails. I don’t use the suggestions. I don’t use the tools that Google provides to Gmail users. So it’s helpful for me to note in my email signature that I don’t use AI for email. The people I communicate with can know they’re talking to me — not to an LLM.
Just about every other kind of business communication or content creation can evolve a footnote about general AI policies in the templates we use to generate the stuff. And when we deviate from what is in the template, we can amend it to clarify exactly how we use AI.
For the same reason that the foods we buy in the supermarket are augmented with lists of ingredients, we should always list the “ingredients” of the communications we do and the content we create so the “consumers” know what they’re getting.
Obviously, this idea works on the honor system. But those who lie about how they use AI are doing us a favor when we catch them in the act. Such people are not to be trusted, even if their information isn’t a hallucination or problematic in any way.
If or when the disclosure trend grows, non-disclosure will likely be seen as an admission or confession that a person is outsourcing their thinking, creativity and work to a chatbot, and therefore can and should be replaced by one.
The use of AI tools for business is creating a small crisis of confusion. Among the harms and benefits, we can at least provide clarity by telling everyone exactly how we’re using AI.
In short, as we enter the AI age, we also should enter the age of AI disclosure.
AI disclosures: I used MacOS Sequoia’s transcription tool to dictate about 20% of the words in this article with my voice. The tool is powered by Apple Intelligence. I used Gemini 3 Pro via Kagi Assistant (disclosure: my son works at Kagi) both as a search engine and to find examples of business communication and disclosure requirements. And I fact-checked this with Kagi Search. I used Lex, which has AI tools., and after writing the column, I used Lex’s grammar checking tools to hunt for typos and errors. I corrected a few capitalization and hyphenation and word-usage errors using Lex.
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