Ethical Digital Marketing In An AI World

Everyone has an opinion about AI. 

Feelings range anywhere from “I’m ready to upload my consciousness to the Matrix now,” to “I hate that this is even a thing”. Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, AI is here to stay. That means if you aren’t evolving, learning as much as you can about it, and bringing back new opportunities to your team, you and your company could easily get left behind. 

This paints a pretty scary picture. For some, it’s causing fear-based reactions to start using as much AI as possible everywhere at once to show your clients, or your boss, that you’re staying up to date. 

As with all things, we believe a balanced approach is the way to go here. As a certified B Corporation, Intuitive Digital is committed to balancing purpose and profit. Our mission is to use technology to deliver excellent digital solutions while ensuring positive outcomes for people, communities, and the planet. Because our B Corp Certification holds us to high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency, our approach to AI must reflect those principles.

We see AI not just as a tool for efficiency or growth, but as a responsibility. We’ve created our own AI Policy that outlines how we will design, deploy, and monitor AI in ways that are ethical, safe, transparent, sustainable, and aligned with our values.

Why do I even need an AI policy? 

If you’re wondering why this even needs to be a thing, let’s do a quick refresher on the current state of AI tools and development. There are dozens of articles covering this topic in detail. Let’s just do a quick recap on some of the biggest issues. 

Bias  

AI algorithms were programmed by humans with unconscious bias, and LLMs were trained on internet content, a place rife with bias and stereotypes, to say the least. If AI algorithms were trained on bias, they’re likely to repeat and unknowingly perpetuate those same biases.

Privacy

Most AI systems are open. That means anything you put in them becomes part of their data. Data they can train on, remember (and potentially repeat), and for their creators to review and use however they see fit. 

Security

AI tools can write scripts for bots to create all kinds of mischief, and let’s not discount the rampant rise of deep fakes that immediately started popping up as video and voice tools were released. AI makes it increasingly easy to spread misinformation and fake news online and discern what is true.

Intellectual Property & Plagiarism

Is AI art ethical? Well, most artists who had their work scraped for AI algorithms to be trained on would say ‘no’. Using a computer to generate a style created and perfected by a specific artist without attribution or compensation sounds a lot like stealing to us. But there’s a fine line between being inspired by art and downright plagiarizing it, and on this particular issue, the kinks are still being worked out in courtrooms. 

Accuracy 

LLMs are supposed to produce original content, but they were trained on content authored by humans, and many times, the phrasing in their responses is a little too similar to the source material. They still hallucinate a fair bit, which means that while the answers they provided may sound correct and are presented as such, they’re often filled with inaccuracies. They can even make up fake references and citations! Human oversight, reference, and fact-checking are still essential. 

Environmental

The environmental issues here start from ground zero, including the rare earth mining practices needed to create computer chips to begin with, and extend through the aggressive consumption of water and energy to the waste generation of the massive data centers required to run the programs. 

What is ethical AI?

So how do we utilize these tools while they’re being perfected in a way that creates efficiencies, provides value, and protects your business, while at the same time watching out for the various pitfalls?

Well, at Intuitive Digital, Ethical AI means:

• Respecting Human Dignity: AI supports decisions, but humans remain accountable.
• Minimizing Harm & Bias: Auditing for unfair outcomes and correcting them where found.
• Transparency & Explainability: When AI influences outputs, we disclose it and ensure users can understand limitations.
• Privacy & Security: Protecting sensitive data and never exposing client or partner data without explicit consent.
• Accountability: Every AI project has clear ownership, oversight, and escalation procedures.
• Sustainability: Reducing and offsetting environmental impact from AI use.
• Continuous Learning: Updating this policy as technology, risks, and laws evolve.

If you’re adopting this framework for your own teams (we think you should), there are still areas where you’ll have to create clear definitions for your organization. For example, what we may see as “harm” generated from an AI tool, another organization might feel is simply the cost of doing business. 

This list is a starting point for developing a thoughtful, comprehensive ethical AI policy that protects your business from harm and ensures you’re using these tools responsibly.

The Intuitive Digital Ethical AI Framework

Because sharing is caring, and using AI ethically matters more than keeping our hard work to ourselves, we’re sharing our internal policies with anyone interested in thinking critically about their own use of these tools.

To be transparent, we’re still not doing all of this perfectly ourselves. Developing this policy highlighted a lot of work we’ll need to do in the coming months to implement it fully. Additional new workflows, processes, and policies need to be created. But it’s easier to get somewhere when you know where you’re going and have a map to get you there. 

This policy is also a living document, meaning it will change and evolve over time as AI itself changes, and we as a company learn and change. This is where we are starting, and the journey will continue from here. Get started on implementing your own Ethical AI Frameworks by downloading the Intuitive Digital Ethical & Responsible AI Policy.