AI content governance policy for a small business

Adding AI changes the drafting process. It does not remove the business's responsibility for the result.

NIST's Generative AI Profile recommends defined roles, documented risks, content provenance, human oversight, incident handling, and ongoing monitoring. The FTC's advertising guidance requires truthful, non-deceptive claims backed by evidence. Those duties apply whether a sentence began in a model, a spreadsheet, or a staff meeting.

Approve uses before tools

List the jobs AI may support: research triage, outlines, draft language, metadata, transcription, or repurposing approved material. Name jobs it may not perform, such as inventing testimonials, publishing without review, creating legal or medical advice, or turning private customer records into marketing copy.

Approve the use case and data class before approving a vendor. Keep credentials, payment data, health information, confidential contracts, and unreleased financial records out unless an owner has approved the exact system and terms.

Keep a source record

Every factual article needs a source list, date checked, and owner. Save the URL or document version behind numbers, quotations, legal claims, product specifications, and comparisons. A search result snippet is not a source.

Separate facts from company judgment. If a source changes, the editor should be able to find every page that used it.

Assign human responsibility

Give each item an authoring owner, fact checker, approver, and correction owner. One person may hold several roles in a small company, but the record should still show which check occurred.

The approver reads the final version shown to the public. Approval should cover the body, title, description, links, structured data, images, CTA, and disclosure.

Make disclosure accurate

Describe the real process. If AI helped research, structure, or draft an article, say so in plain language and name the human reviewer. Do not claim that a person wrote every word when that is false. Do not imply that a model verified facts when a person did not.

Disclosure does not cure a deceptive claim. FTC guidance says qualifying information must be clear and close to the claim it limits. A footer cannot repair an unsupported promise in the headline.

Control claims and prohibited content

Require evidence before publishing performance, savings, earnings, accuracy, market-share, safety, or customer-result claims. Ban fabricated reviews, unnamed customer stories, fake quotations, borrowed credentials, and statistics without a traceable source.

Create an escalation path for regulated subjects and complaints. Route legal or sector-specific judgments to counsel or the qualified owner.

Record changes and corrections

Store the prompt or brief, model and version when available, sources, final text, reviewer, approval date, and publication URL. Record material corrections with the reason and date. Use an honest modified date rather than refreshing dates to make old content look new.

When a claim is wrong, correct the public page first. Then trace where the claim was reused, update those copies, and record the cause.

Review vendors and access

Limit access by role and remove former staff promptly. Ask vendors how prompts, uploads, outputs, logs, and feedback are retained or used. Record subprocessors and whether customer data trains shared models.

Recheck the policy after a material vendor, model, data, or workflow change.

Use a release checklist

Before publication, confirm that the topic has a business owner, sources open, claims match the sources, confidential data is absent, links work, disclosure matches the process, a person approved the final version, and a correction owner is named.

DATIK's Content Engine keeps research, review, publishing, and maintenance in one operating record. The AI disclosure shows the public process used on this site. A free diagnostic can turn one current article workflow into a policy your team can follow.

Sources and review limits

• NIST AI 600-1
• NIST AI Risk Management Framework
• FTC: Artificial Intelligence
• FTC Advertising FAQs
• Google Search spam policies

Sources were checked on October 9, 2026. This is an operating template, not legal advice. Adapt it to your contracts, privacy obligations, regulated activities, employment rules, and record-retention duties.