Imagine if your team used AI to draft a sensitive media response and it confidently invented a quote from the CEO to “make it stronger”. The statement goes out, the journalist asks for confirmation, and you are suddenly correcting the record in public. Now you are managing a client relationship risk and a reputational risk, all from a workflow that felt like normal work under pressure.
“Responsible AI” isn’t a slogan. It is a practical set of guardrails that let people move quickly without creating avoidable harm.
At ICON, our approach starts with the approach that AI should enhance human skills, not replace human judgement. We use it to lift productivity and quality, while keeping accountability with people, because people understand nuance, context and consequences.
The importance of a Safe and Responsible AI Use Policy
Guardrails work best when they are easy to follow in the middle of a busy day. Ours focus on seven areas outlined in a Safe and Responsible AI Use Policy.
First, purpose and limits. AI gets risky when it quietly becomes the default way work is done. Our policy sets expectations across common uses like research, content generation, creative design, coding, analysis and project management, and anchors those uses in ethical and legal compliance.
Second, approved tools. Not all AI tools handle data the same way, and “everyone using whatever they like” is a governance gap. We restrict work use to ICON-approved tools and avoid personal or unauthorised AI tools for ICON business, to protect ICON and client data.
Third, disciplined handling of information. Most AI incidents start with copying or uploading the wrong thing. Our policy is explicit about categories that must never be entered into AI tools, including personal information, confidential or sensitive material, client data under NDAs, passwords and security credentials, and sensitive government information. When uncertainty exists, the expectation is to pause and ask before uploading or pasting.
Fourth, incident response. Mistakes can happen, particularly when people are moving fast. The guardrail here is speed and transparency internally. Sensitive data accidentally shared with an AI tool must be reported immediately so corrective action can happen quickly.
Fifth, clear red lines on harmful use. Responsible AI is also about people and communities, not only data. Our policy prohibits using AI to insult or demean others, reinforce discriminatory stereotypes, harass or threaten, mislead or manipulate audiences, or create content that undermines human dignity and rights. This matters because AI can scale harm just as easily as it scales productivity.
Sixth, human oversight and validation. AI outputs can be fluent and wrong. They can also be right in the abstract and wrong for a client’s context, tone, or obligations. Our policy requires validation against trusted sources, alignment with the client brief, and checks for legal and ethical risks, with a final human review and sign-off before anything AI-assisted is shared with clients or used in deliverables.
Seventh, transparency with clients. Trust depends on clarity. Clients must be informed when AI tools are used to create contracted deliverables, and they should be reassured that human experts oversee the work. We’re open about the tools we use and bring clients into ICON’s AI stack to help them learn and adapt to new ways of working collaboratively.
Guardrails and policies aren’t there to slow teams down. They prevent avoidable rework, reduce the chance of a breach or a public correction, and protect the relationship capital organisations rely on. They also create consistency. When everyone shares the same rules, people spend less time second-guessing what is allowed and more time doing good work.