Brand execution guidelines
AI guidelines
Arizona State University embraces technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) tools allowing students, faculty and staff to have a scalable and effective impact. While these powerful tools can assist in furthering the marketing and communication community as a springboard in areas of creative and content generation, we must be aware of the potential risks, including the inadvertent disclosure of proprietary or confidential institutional data, violations of university policy and/or violations of state and federal laws.
As AI technologies continue to evolve, the Enterprise Brand Strategy and Management team, in partnership with Enterprise Technology and the Office of General Counsel, will continue to update the following guidelines for AI use in marketing and communication work.
Guidelines
AI tools are meant to be used as a springboard, not for final products.
- AI tools are partners in work, speeding up concept generation and initial drafts, but they do not replace the expertise that ASU staff bring to the final product. Humans must iterate on AI outputs to ensure that the materials align with university branding and messaging.
- Be aware of bias AI might generate based on a prompt it is given. The tool could be influenced by incorrect or out-of-context data from which the tool is pulling. AI users hold the responsibility to monitor and reduce input and output bias.
As an academic institution, we must source materials when appropriate.
- AI tools pull from different materials without regard to copyright, intellectual property or the truth. Written content produced with assistance from AI tools must undergo an editing and review process to avoid infringement or plagiarism and to ensure the accuracy of facts and data points.
- If AI tools are used to create visual elements in organic or paid marketing efforts such as brochures, social media, websites, newsletters or other collateral, include an image credit with the tool used to generate the image or graphic.
Protecting personal data and university intellectual property
- Free generative AI tools assume that you are giving your prompts and inputs to them in return for the use of their tool. Use them with the assumption that all of what you give them and create with them will become public and available for use by the tool or by other users.
- Caution should be exercised when using AI tools to alter ASU images or footage featuring students, faculty or staff. All images featuring visibly recognizable people should have appropriate releases.
- AI cannot be used to generate photorealistic images or videos of students, faculty or staff.
- It is prohibited to share information with an AI tool that is confidential under university policies and rules.
- Examples include:
- Student information.
- Personnel information.
- University intellectual property, including teaching and research materials.
- Information that the university has promised to keep confidential, for example, from a contract, grant application or disclosure to research participants.
- Information about the university that is confidential, proprietary or otherwise not public.
- Examples include:
Following ASU policies and best practices, Enterprise Technology has developed digital trust guidelines for generative artificial intelligence use.
View ASU’s digital trust guidelines for AI use
Find tools and resources that have been vetted and approved for use at ASU
Opportunity to integrate AI into your work
- Research: AI tools can help you gain an understanding of topics that push forward your work. As stated before, humans must verify all information, facts and data as AI tools can “hallucinate” or surface outdated supportive research.
- Brainstorming: AI can jump-start the creative process by drafting a visual board or written content (press releases or news stories, social media posts, web content, etc). It can offer a different perspective or provide constructive feedback on existing concepts for content.
- Synthesize information: AI tools can quickly identify themes in content which can be used to determine content structure and navigation, such as: SEO terms, headlines, subheads, website headers and H3 tags.
- Editing: AI tools can answer questions about AP style, but should be checked as not all tools are up-to-date and they are not able to provide answers on the ASU Writing Guide.
Remember to avoid sharing confidential, unpublished, proprietary or intellectual property information with a tool that may keep and reuse that content.
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