Internal AI Usage Guidelines
Internal AI Usage Policy
What are internal AI usage guidelines?
- A document that enables use, not just bans
- Core elements: restricted data, approved tools, verification responsibility
- Without Q&A examples, no one reads it
Once guidelines exist as a document, the questions people ask on the floor change shape. Before that, the question reaching team leaders was “Can I put this in?” and the answer was usually “Just be careful.” When judgment is left to individual instinct, only cautious people lose out, while bold people cause incidents. The moment a baseline is written down, the weight of judgment shifts from the individual to the organization, and employees stop asking “Am I allowed?” and start asking “How should I use it?” One sentence that spells out what is permitted raises usage more than ten prohibitions.
Guidelines that work in practice sort data into tiers instead of listing long prohibitions. The structure has 3 levels: public information (press releases, website posts) has no restrictions; internal information (meeting minutes, work manuals) may only be used in company-contracted tools; confidential information (customer personal data, unreleased results, original contracts) must never be entered into any tool. Tools are tiered too. Enterprise accounts with the training opt-out enabled, tools used after department head approval, and free personal accounts each handle a different tier. This document does not replace the information security policy or privacy policy. It is a practical guideline that sits beneath them, so include one line stating that the higher-level policy prevails in case of conflict. Keeping it to two A4 pages or fewer is a realistic target.
A policy packed with prohibitions only breeds shadow AI. When company accounts get blocked, people paste content into a personal account on their phone on the way home, and then there isn’t even a log. The belief that “we removed the name and company, so it’s anonymized” is also risky. Once region, revenue size, and product category appear together, that combination alone can identify a specific client. The point missed even more often is the contract. If a confidentiality clause with a client prohibits input into third-party services, that case is a breach of contract even when company guidelines allow it. Skimming the security clauses of your major won deals and listing the exceptions explicitly is just as important as drafting the policy.
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum Consulting
Seolyeong ParkGenerative AI and AX training specialist with 17 years of hands-on experience and 200+ lectures, helping non-technical staff put AI to work right awayThis practical document became standard company policy after reports of corporate data leaks through generative AI, as its use spread quickly across workplaces. As AI regulations and privacy laws take shape around the world, it is increasingly folded into broader governance frameworks.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A makes auto parts and is a mid-sized firm with 420 employees and KRW 180 billion (≈ US$134,670,100) in annual revenue. An internal audit revealed that a sales rep had pasted a client’s quote terms into a chatbot on a personal account, and management was alarmed. The management support division launched an 8-week project to draft internal guidelines.
- When the head of information security ran an anonymous survey, 68% of 310 respondents were already using AI, and 81% of them on personal accounts the company knew nothing about. That is where the conclusion came from: “If we block it, people just hide it.”
- A legal team manager and 6 practitioners from sales, purchasing, and production sorted company data into 3 tiers. It took two meetings to settle on price lists and mold drawings as confidential, meeting minutes as internal, and product catalogs as public.
- The IT manager rolled out 150 enterprise seats, switched on the opt-out from model training, and put one sentence at the top of the announcement: “Inside the company account, feel free to use AI even with internal-grade information.”
- The head of sales was the first to raise a hand at a team meeting. “I’m the one who entered the quote terms. Nobody will be disciplined over this,” they said. Over the next two months, the reporting channel collected 14 near-miss reports.
- The company distributed a two-page A4 summary and 20 Q&As based on real cases, and named an owner for semiannual updates. Six months later, personal-account use fell from 81% to 17%, and the average time to draft a sales proposal dropped from 3 hours to 50 minutes.