Generative AI guidance for Marketing and Communications

Generative AI and other AI technologies are powerful tools with the potential to support marketing and communications work, but they cannot serve as a substitute for human creativity, judgment, and the expertise we bring to our field.

This page aims to provide marketing and communications professionals at Brock a framework for the use of generative AI tools, software, etc. where and when they might intersect with any areas of our activities.

With human oversight, and using these guidelines as reference, we believe that generative AI can have a positive impact on our work.

What is generative AI?

From the Government of Canada, Guide on the use of Generative AI:

[Artificial intelligence is] information technology that performs tasks that would ordinarily require biological brainpower to accomplish, such as making sense of spoken language, learning behaviours, or solving problems.

Generative AI is a type of AI that produces content such as text, audio, code, videos and images. This content is produced based on information that the user inputs, which consists of prompts (typically short instructional texts).

Guiding principles

  • We take a human-centric approach that views AI as an additive tool that can augment and support our work, rather than perform it autonomously without oversight.
  • AI can be used to generate ideas, spark inspiration, help us analyze or summarize large volumes of information, or make minor edits to traditional digital images or videos (changes that don’t affect the authenticity of the work, such as adjusting colours, a sky or hiding a prominent brand name in a photo are considered minor edits).
  • We never use or publish content that is entirely produced by AI. Anything generated should be fact-checked, heavily edited or rewritten, and modified as needed to ensure brand standards are met.
  • We understand that generative AIs are prone to hallucinations and confabulations. When used, humans must verify all generated materials for accuracy and authenticity.
  • AI tools are known to have certain inherent biases. We must check all AI generated content against such possible biases. Conversely, we may use AI tools to check our own materials for any bias.
  • We don’t input any sensitive or personal information, and other confidential university records, into an AI prompt. This extends to names of places, buildings or the institution itself, where possible.
  • We understand that AI generated content may be infringing on the intellectual property rights of others, and must review all generated material accordingly.
  • Humans are accountable & ultimately responsible for everything that we produce and publish, including that which may include AI-generated materials. We must be transparent and explicit about our use of AI.

How we may not use generative AI

  • We don’t use AI to generate or write stories, media releases, or otherwise generate content from scratch.
  • We don’t use wholly AI generated images or video.
  • We don’t publish AI generated materials (text, images, audio or video) or use such materials as part of Brock University publications unless it explicitly serves to provide context for AI related stories, publications, etc.
  • We never feed sensitive or confidential information or data into an AI prompt for processing, including personal information, confidential university records, security-related code or passcodes, etc.

Acceptable ways to leverage generative AI

  • To spark inspiration — brainstorm taglines, headlines, serve as a thesaurus, or to generate story ideas.
  • For speech-to-text automatic transcription of audio and video content, understanding that such transcripts should always be manually reviewed and edited before publication.
  • To process large sets of data, to summarize or synthesize lengthy texts or documents, to extract main points or create visualizations such as tables or graphs.
  • For performing minor edits or adjustments to images & photos or audio files, in ways that don’t affect the authenticity of the work. For instance, a sky may be replaced in a photo, a prominent brand name may be removed or smudged, background noise and glitches may be removed from an audio file.
  • To check, debug or optimize code on public web pages for web content or web accessibility compliance purposes.
  • To research keywords for search engine optimization or digital marketing campaigns.

Feedback

These guidelines are intended to be a living document that will evolve alongside generative AI technology and tools. We welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Questions about these guidelines and how they might apply to your project can be directed to universitycoms@brocku.ca.