Before you paste a client’s details into AI

Start with whether you’re allowed to. Before client information goes into any AI tool, check that your own rules and your agreements with clients permit sharing it with that service. If you’re not sure, use an invented example with no real details.

Then read the provider’s current terms and the settings on your particular account. Three separate questions: whether what you type may be used to train the model, whether it is kept, and who can see it. A single training setting doesn’t answer all three.

Take names, addresses and account numbers out before you paste, and know that isn’t always enough — a location, a date and a set of circumstances can identify someone on their own. Give the tool only the situation it needs: “a long-standing client who is unhappy about a missed appointment,” not the client.

Read the draft against what you told it. Check it hasn’t added a commitment, let out something you meant to keep in, or changed the meaning.

In a business, these choices belong in written guidance: which tools and uses are approved, what stays out, and who reads anything AI-written before a customer does. A reviewer is a real check. It does not replace the decision about whether the information should have gone in at all.