AI Policy

Last updated: 09/09/25

This policy outlines our approach to using AI for our services and marketing content. It applies to all employees and directly contracted freelancers.

How we might use AI...and how we won't use it

At Commonplace, we use AI as a helpful tool to make our work clearer and more efficient. It helps us summarise information, refine drafts, and organise ideas. What it doesn’t do is replace research or act as a source of facts. Research always comes from trusted data, expert knowledge, review of publicly available materials, trusted sustainability tools and careful human judgement.

We are aware that some of the software we use has AI integrations. To date, we have not paid for any add-ons of this type and have only used AI passively in this sense.

Environmental impact

We are aware that AI can have a significant environmental footprint, and we want to be thoughtful about how we use it. We’re keeping an eye on best practices in this area and taking steps to reduce unnecessary impact, such as:

Skipping energy-heavy features like image generation
Choosing lighter tasks for AI (like text summarising) instead of running large, complex processes when a simple one will do
Reusing and improving drafts instead of asking the system to generate lots of versions from scratch

We’ll keep updating our approach as the technology, and the guidance around it, evolves.

Goals

By August 2026 we will have reviewed all integrated AI in our software to see if any can be switched off or optimised for environmental impact.

By August 2026 we will have a preferred supplier list for AI services based on social and environmental impacts.