Many agencies are using generative AI tools but some are concerned about:
- Client confidentiality i.e. anything you feed into an AI tool relating to your client
- Copyright and ownership (of inputs or outputs)
- Contractual agreements and AI policies
Well, thankfully we have lawyers like Sharon Toerek from Toerek Law who specialise in helping agencies navigate this fast-evolving space. Sharon joined me for a Creative Agency Account Manager podcast episode.Some key takeaways from her advice include:Have early conversationsHave early conversations with clients about using AI to help you:a) Understand if your client already has an AI use policy in place to followb) Discuss and agree:
- The AI tools you’ll use
- How you’ll use them e.g. to generate outputs? for inspiration only? etc
- Ownership rights of both inputs (prompts) and outputs
- How research data will be used
- Privacy settings
- Liabilities
- Percentage of content generated by the agency
Establish a written agreementCapture the details of AI use in your Scope of Work (SoW)/contract and have a separate clause dedicated to it Protect privacy of client’s informationBe very careful to avoid feeding any AI tool with client information (I asked Sharon specifically if switching to ChatGPT4's privacy mode is safe and she said to 'exercise caution' as it's still unclear whether it can be relied upon).Sharon also explained that although she hasn't dealt with any cases of a client suing an agency for misuse of AI, she expects to see more cases in the future. Create an internal and external AI use policyIf you haven't already, establish an internal policy (instructing staff when/how they should use it) AND an external policy about responsible use.The external policy should cover; agency commitments, responsibilities and indemnifications (see guidelines from the Marketing AI Institute). The external policy can be shared with clients during contract negotiations. Protect your intellectual property I shared with Sharon that I’d recently come across a situation in which an agency account manager had been asked by her client for a prompt that could replicate additional headlines in the same tone of voice and style the agency had previously provided (the client loved the headlines and wanted to be able to replicate it for future use).Her view on this was that we need to be comfortable with the fact this is essentially giving away our IP and that the decision needs to be a commercially balanced one. These are just some of the topics we covered during the chat so I’d highly recommend you listen to the whole episode.
