Ethical AI use statement

This is a badge indicating that the content has been written by humans and not AI. It is circular and centred on a pictogram of a fingerprint. The badge says "Certified. Written by humans."

As the topic of generative AI becomes more contentious, you should be able to trust that if people claim great experience and knowledge, they actually possess such and are not getting an AI model to make it up.

So-called, "AI Slop" is a threat to both useful content marketing and the trust between vendors and consumers. You know it, we know it.

In content such as our free guides, we place some iconography to indicate our promise to you that we have created the content ourselves and with the added value of our perspectives and opinions. You will never read AI-generated content when it comes to content where our knowledge and reputation are at stake.

So, our self-imposed AI usage guidance:

  1. We never use AI for content that is publicly consumed or provided to clients on which our reputation depends, beyond that of a jumped-up spell and grammar checker. Seriously, what's the point?
  2. We will use AI to make our project research activities more efficient and of higher quality, but the researcher is 100% constantly in the loop. More on our research methods here.
  3. We will use AI to research new topics and as a sounding board for ideas. It's really very useful for that but we are experienced researchers and have long careers as well as academic qualifications to fall back on to fact check the needful.
  4. We will absolutely use AI to save us time and to extend our capabilities in activities that are necessary but not our core mission, such as helping with the website, helping SEO activities, and any of the other tedious shenanigans required of small business owners in this increasingly strange and demanding world.

So perhaps, should you be speaking to people in the industry, ask them to say whether their content is written by a human or not?