Summary: An AI policy generator is a fine way to get past the blank page. It is a poor way to finish. Any generated policy has the same weak spots: generic tool lists, vague data rules, no owner, and no plan for when the rules are broken. Here are the six checks to run on the output before you hand it to your team.
What a generator is good for
Most small businesses do not have an AI policy because writing one feels like a project. A generator removes that excuse. You answer a few questions about your business and get a structured document with the sections you would otherwise forget. That is worth having. If you want to start there, the AI policy generator on this site does exactly that.
What a generator cannot do is know your business. It does not know that your office manager pastes customer emails into a chatbot to draft replies, or that your bookkeeper uses an AI add-in inside a spreadsheet that holds payroll. The policy only works if it describes what your people actually do. So treat the output as a draft and run the checks below.
Check 1: Does it name the tools people really use?
Generated policies tend to say “approved AI tools” without naming any. That sentence tells nobody anything. Walk around the office, or ask in your team chat, and list every AI tool in use, including the ones built into software you already pay for. Then write the approved list into the policy by name, and say which plan or account type is approved. A free consumer account and a business account from the same vendor often have different terms on how your inputs are handled.
Check 2: Is the data rule specific enough to follow?
“Do not share confidential information” is the line most drafts include, and it is the line people ignore, because nobody knows what counts. Replace it with a concrete list: customer names and contact details, payment information, health or student records, contracts, anything under an NDA, login credentials. The risk is real and well documented. In 2023 Samsung restricted employee use of ChatGPT after staff pasted internal source code into it. The same thing happens at small firms every week, just without a news story.
Check 3: Does a human review what goes out?
The policy should say who checks AI output before it reaches a customer, a court, a student or the public. Courts have sanctioned lawyers who filed briefs with citations an AI invented, so this is not a theoretical concern. Name the review step for each kind of output: quotes, emails, legal or financial statements, marketing copy. A quote that an AI prices from outdated information is a good example, and I wrote about how to stop an AI assistant quoting wrong prices.
Check 4: Does it fit your industry rules?
A generic policy ignores the rules your profession already has. Lawyers have duties of confidentiality and competence, and the American Bar Association issued Formal Opinion 512 in July 2024 on lawyers’ use of generative AI. Schools handle student records under FERPA. Anyone touching health data has HIPAA to think about. If one of these applies to you, the generated text is a starting point for a conversation with whoever advises you on compliance, not a substitute for it.
Check 5: Does it say who owns it?
A policy with no named owner stops being updated the week after it is signed. Put one person’s name on it. That person answers questions, approves new tools, and decides what happens when someone breaks a rule. In a small business this is usually the owner or the operations lead, and it takes an hour or two a quarter.
Check 6: Is it short enough to be read?
Generators produce long documents because length looks thorough. Your team will read one or two pages. Cut anything that does not change what a person does on Monday morning. If a section cannot be turned into a clear do or do not, it is probably filler. For a fuller look at what belongs in the document, see AI policy for small business.
A useful reference point
If you want an outside framework to measure against, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (version 1.0, published January 2023) is free and organized around four functions: govern, map, measure and manage. It is written for larger organizations, so you will not adopt it whole, but its questions are a good test of whether your draft has gaps.
Frequently asked questions
Is a free AI policy generator good enough?
For a first draft, yes. A generator gets the structure down in minutes. It cannot know which tools your team actually uses, what client data you hold, or what your industry rules require, so the draft needs a human pass before anyone is asked to follow it.
What should an AI policy cover?
At minimum: which tools are approved, what data must never be entered into them, who checks AI output before it reaches a customer, how AI use is disclosed, and who to ask when a case is unclear.
Do I need a lawyer to review my AI policy?
If you hold regulated data, such as health, financial or student records, or you work under professional conduct rules, yes. For a small team using AI for drafting and research, a careful internal review is usually a reasonable start, with legal review added as your use grows.
How often should an AI policy be updated?
Review it when you add a new tool, when a tool changes its data terms, and at least once a year. A policy that names tools nobody uses anymore stops being read.
When this matters - and when it doesn’t
This applies if: more than one person at your business uses AI tools, or you handle customer data of any kind. Two people and a shared chatbot account is enough to need written rules.
Skip this if: you are a one-person shop using AI only on your own non-sensitive work. A page of personal ground rules is plenty, and a formal policy would be more paperwork than protection.
If you would rather have the policy tied to the actual work your team does, that is part of what an AI Workflow Assessment covers: what is worth doing with AI, and what rules it needs around it.
Get the next one before it is published.
I post the prompts, workflows and checklists behind these articles in the community first, and answer questions there myself.
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