Templates you can take and change.
Four short documents for using AI at work: a one-page policy, a never-paste list, a register of the tools your team uses, and lines for saying when AI helped. Download one, change anything, and use it. They’re free.
A one-page AI policy
Six short rules a small team can read in a minute: which tools, what never goes in, who checks, when you tell people, who owns it.
- Fill in the parts in [brackets], starting with the tools your team is allowed to use.
- Write the "When we tell people" rule yourself. It differs from one business to the next.
- Put a review date on it, and change it when a tool changes.
Made from The One-Page AI Policy Your Business Needs.
AI use at [business name]
Tools you can use
[List the actual products and account types.] If it is not on this list, ask before using it for work. Free personal accounts are not on this list. If you want something added, say so — the list is meant to grow.
What never goes in
Client names or contact details, anything from a client file, health information, payment details, passwords, staff records, anything under an NDA. If you are not sure whether something counts, assume it does.
Someone reads it before it leaves
Nothing drafted with AI goes to a client, a regulator or the public until a person has read it in full and is happy to put their name to it. That person is responsible for it being right.
When we tell people
[Your rule. For example: we tell a client when AI was used to draft something they will rely on, and we never use it to produce anything presented as personal advice.]
You own what you send
The person who sends the work owns the work. "The AI wrote it" is not an explanation we will accept, and knowing that in advance is the point of this line.
Questions
Anything unclear, or a tool you want on the list: [name, email]. Last updated [date]. Applies to everyone who does work for us, including contractors.
From C4Site, c4site.com.au. CC BY 4.0.
A never-paste list
What never goes into an AI tool at your workplace, with the two questions to ask when you’re not sure.
- Keep the list for your kind of workplace and delete the other two.
- Add the clients, systems or projects that are off limits for you.
- Print it, or pin it where people paste.
Made from the data-safety one-pager from our sessions.
Before you paste anything in: [organisation]
Depending on the tool and your account settings, what you type may be kept by the provider or used to train its models. Treat anything you paste as if someone outside your organisation could read it.
Two questions before anything goes in
- Does it name or describe a real person?
- Is it confidential to [the organisation] or a client?
If the answer to either is yes, leave it out, or take the details out first. Swap names for roles: [“the client”, “Supplier 2”, “the account manager”].
An office or business
- Company confidential material
- Client and customer personal information
- Commercial-in-confidence material: contracts, pricing, tenders
- Staff records and anyone’s health details
- Logins, passwords and anything that opens a system
- [Anything else that’s off limits here]
A law firm
- Anything covered by legal professional privilege
- Client confidential information
- Matter details that identify a client or another party
- Logins, passwords and anything that opens a system
- [Anything else that’s off limits here]
A school
- Anything that identifies a student: names, photos, reports, work samples with names on them
- Staff personal details
- Confidential school matters
- Logins, passwords and anything that opens a system
- Students under a tool’s minimum age
- [Anything else that’s off limits here]
Not sure?
Ask [name] before you paste. If our policy restricts or bans a tool, that beats this list.
General guidance from C4Site. It isn’t legal advice. Where your organisation’s own policy says something different, follow your policy.
From C4Site, c4site.com.au. CC BY 4.0.
An AI tools register
Every AI tool your team uses for work on one page: which account, what it’s for, and whether training on your data is switched off.
- Add a row for each tool and each kind of account. A personal account and a work account of the same tool count as two.
- For the training column, check the tool’s current settings, or look it up on our page Where your data goes.
- Give each row an owner, and check it again every [three months].
Made from Where your data goes.
AI tools we use: [organisation]
Every AI tool anyone here uses for work, on one page. We check it every [three months], and whenever a tool changes its plans or settings.
How to fill it in
- Tool and account: the product and the account it runs on, such as a personal account or the [organisation] workspace.
- Approved for: the jobs it’s allowed for.
- Never for: anything on our never-paste list, and any job this tool shouldn’t do.
- Training: whether what we type can be used to train the maker’s models, and the name of the setting that controls it.
- Last checked: the date someone read the tool’s current settings, not the date it was added.
From C4Site, c4site.com.au. CC BY 4.0.
Lines for saying AI helped
Short, plain lines for telling a reader how AI was used, for documents, emails, websites and school tasks.
- Pick the lines that fit your work, change the words, and delete the rest.
- Decide when you use them, and write that rule into your AI policy.
- In a school, check your school’s and your sector’s own rules first.
Made from the "When we tell people" rule in our one-page AI policy.
Saying when AI helped: [organisation]
Short lines for saying how AI was used. Pick the ones that fit, change the words, and delete the rest.
In a document or report
- Drafted with help from [tool], then checked and edited by [name] on [date].
- [Tool] summarised the source documents. [Name] checked the summary against them.
In an email to a client
- I used [tool] to help draft this. I’ve checked it, and I’m responsible for what it says.
On a website or in marketing
- Parts of this page were drafted with AI, then checked and edited by our team.
In a school task
- You may use [tool] for [this part of the task]. Say what you used it for in a short note at the end.
- Not allowed in this task: [the use that isn’t allowed].
When we say it
[Your rule. For example: whenever AI drafted something a client will rely on, and never for work presented as a person’s own advice.]
From C4Site, c4site.com.au. CC BY 4.0.
Yours to change.
Every template is free to use, change and share under CC BY 4.0, at work as well as at home. Keep a line that says where it came from: C4Site, c4site.com.au.
The Word files open in Word, Google Docs (File, then Open, then Upload) and LibreOffice. The parts to fill in sit on a pale green wash that goes when you type over them.
They’re general guidance, not legal advice. Where your organisation’s own policy says something different, your policy wins.
The same files, and the research behind the rest of the site, are in our open research and on GitHub.
Want your team taken through it?
Every session includes a data-safety module, and your team keeps a prompt pack for your sector and the data-safety one-pager.