Guidelines
do's and don'ts on working with ai
Clear do's and don'ts give a newsroom a shared footing for using AI day to day. This card helps a team draft practical rules: what is fine to use AI for, what needs a human check, what is off limits. Good guidelines are short enough to remember and specific enough to follow.
Questions to explore
- What uses of AI should always require a human review before publishing?
- Which tasks, if any, should AI never be used for in your newsroom?
- How will these guidelines reach freelancers and new staff?
- Who decides when a guideline needs to change, and how often will you revisit them?
- What happens when someone is unsure whether a use is allowed?
Expert voices
“Guidelines have to be lived, not just written. How do you move from policy on paper to daily newsroom practice?”
“Develop internal AI guidelines where every team has a say, and make them transparent to audiences. Without them, reporters will use AI on their own, unregulated and possibly hidden from management.”
“Start your AI policy collaboratively with core principles: human accountability, disclosure rules, ethical red lines. Treat it as a living document, and do not copy another newsroom's policy without adapting it to your culture, size, and audience.”
“Integrate ethics throughout the whole process, not only at the end. Ethics works as ongoing practice, not as a final module.”
Things to consider
- Rules people can remember get followed more than long policies.
- Name a clear owner who keeps the guidelines current.
- Leave a path for questions about cases the rules do not cover.
Pull Guidelines when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other AI Conversations cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.
More AI Conversations cards
