A Human Touch: Essential Guardrails for Using Generative AI in Content Creation

Generative AI is like a self-driving car.

Can you really trust it enough to take your hands off the steering wheel?

The last thing you want is your content drifting off the road and into a ditch — which is why it is so critical to have guardrails in place to safeguard your AI-generated content.

9 Guardrails to Incorporate Into Your Generative AI Process

There is no question that generative AI has paved the way for innovation in efficiency and scalability when creating content. However, brands must implement human guardrails to maintain quality, accuracy, and ethical standards for their AI-generated content.

1. Human Review and Editing

One of the most important safeguards is a human review process. AI-generated content, while efficient, can produce errors or content that lacks nuance. By having human editors review, fact-check, and refine the content, brands can ensure accuracy and quality.

Human oversight adds the critical layer of expertise that AI tools may lack, ensuring the final product aligns with your brand's standards.

2. Fact-Checking

Given the potential for AI-generated content to include inaccuracies or "hallucinations" (i.e., fabricated information), a rigorous fact-checking process is essential.

All claims, statistics, and facts provided by the AI should be verified against trusted sources before publication. Establishing a structured fact-checking workflow helps mitigate the risk of publishing incorrect or misleading information.

3. Attribution and Sourcing

Proper attribution and sourcing of information are critical when using generative AI. Ensure that any data, quotes, or external information included in the AI-generated content are properly cited. This not only ensures ethical content production but also adds credibility and transparency to your content, fostering trust with your audience.

4. Ethical Guidelines

Developing clear ethical guidelines for AI-generated content is a crucial step in avoiding issues related to plagiarism, misinformation, or intellectual property infringement. These guidelines should be integrated into your overall content style guide to ensure that AI content creation adheres to the same ethical standards as human-generated content. By formalizing these guidelines, your brand can set clear expectations and maintain integrity across all content.

5. Regular Audits

Periodic audits of AI-generated content are necessary to evaluate its performance, accuracy, and adherence to quality standards. Audits allow your organization to identify any recurring issues, adjust your content generation process, and continuously improve content quality. This feedback loop helps maintain consistency and ensures AI tools evolve with your content goals.

6. Transparency

Transparency is one of the most talked about aspects of using AI in content creation. Consider labeling or disclosing when content has been created or augmented by AI tools. Practicing this kind of transparency can help build trust with your audience by providing them with insight into how content is developed, ensuring clarity around the use of AI.

7. Cross-Functional Oversight

AI-generated content should not be evaluated in isolation. Involving cross-functional teams — including legal, ethical, and subject matter experts — ensures comprehensive oversight. These teams bring diverse perspectives to the evaluation process, helping to address potential legal, ethical, or content-specific issues that may arise from AI use.

8. Bias Monitoring

Generative AI models can sometimes exhibit biases based on the data they’ve been trained on. Regularly assessing AI outputs for potential biases is critical in maintaining fairness and objectivity. Brands should consider using bias detection tools and diversifying their training data to reduce bias in AI-generated content.

9. Content Goals Alignment

AI-generated content should always support, not dictate, your content strategy. Any AI-created content should align with your predefined content goals, brand voice, and audience needs. By guiding AI with clear parameters and ensuring that outputs are reviewed in context, brands can effectively harness AI to create content that resonates with their audience while maintaining control over their messaging.

Oversight is Essential to Generative AI

Generative AI can be a powerful tool for content creation, but without proper oversight, it can pose risks related to accuracy, quality, and ethics, which can be damaging to your brand reputation. By implementing guardrails, organizations can ensure that AI-generated content supports their goals without compromising their standards.

If you’re looking for the right humans to oversee your AI-generated content, let’s chat.