For clients and buyers

AI use is normal. Knowing about it should be, too.

Your suppliers may already use AI somewhere in your work. That is fine. Three plain questions can help you understand whether they are open about it, keep a person responsible, and protect your confidential information.

Three questions to ask any firm.

Do you tell us when AI meaningfully contributed to our work?

You are not asking them to stop using AI. You are asking to know when it shaped something you rely on.

Who is the person responsible for the work before it reaches us?

AI should not replace human responsibility for important work. You want to hear that a person reviews important work and can change or reject anything the AI produced.

How do you keep our confidential information out of public AI tools?

This is especially important when suppliers handle confidential or sensitive information. A supplier should be able to say plainly which tools are allowed for your information and which are not.

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Wording for a contract or RFP.

Short, plain, and easy for a good supplier to say yes to. Adapt it to your own contract language.

As AI disclosure and human-oversight expectations grow, asking these questions now can make future procurement and governance requirements easier to navigate.

AI USE

The supplier confirms that:
1. It tells us when AI meaningfully contributed to work delivered to us.
2. A person reviews important AI-assisted work before delivery and remains
   responsible for it.
3. Our confidential information is not entered into public or unapproved AI tools.

Where the supplier holds an independent certification covering its AI use, it shall
provide the certificate reference and a link to the public registry entry.

Check the claim.

If a firm tells you it is certified, you should be able to confirm it without asking them. Every Ethicality certification has a public entry showing scope, dates, and current status.

Check any certificate in the public registry →

Ethicality is a private certification program. An Ethicality Badge reflects an independent assessment of the AI-use practices an organization disclosed to us, against the published EAUS standard, as at the assessment date. It does not certify compliance with any law.