Ern Berck Digital

AI Policy

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Our thoughts on AI

This policy ensures that all AI tools are used ethically, securely, and in alignment with our core values of excellence, transparency, and accountability.

Stay human

Ern Berck Digital embraces artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct research, improve productivity, and help solve technical problems. Like many design professionals, we’ve discovered that overuse of AI can lead to intellectual laziness, a decline in mental acuity, and the inability to distinguish great work from the merely mediocre. So we use it with cautious skepticism. We suggest you do the same.

Permitted AI activities

We use approved AI tools for tasks such as:

  • Research: Industry-specific content investigation and fact-finding.
  • Brainstorming: Exploring initial design concepts and content outlines.
  • Content drafting: Creating initial drafts of website copy, blog posts, or social media updates.
  • Code optimization: Assisting with code review, debugging, and refactoring.
  • Productivity: Summarizing meetings, transcribing audio, and data analysis for internal reporting.
  • Image generation: Creating illustrations, charts, graphs, and other data visualizations.

Prohibited AI activities

We do not use AI for the following:

  • Inputting any private information, client data, or proprietary company details into AI tools.
  • Making final decisions regarding client projects, vendor selection, or human resource matters like hiring or firing, without independent human judgment and oversight.
  • Generating content that is inaccurate, biased, discriminatory, or promotes misinformation.
  • Violating any intellectual property (IP) or copyright laws.
  • Impersonating clients, partners, or service providers.

In the context of design and marketing, we never use AI to:

  • Rewrite or “spin” original written work
  • Rephrase ebooks or PDFs
  • Rewrite blog posts
  • Repackage research
  • Modify original artwork or photographs
  • Generate websites, web pages, or page layouts

Our ethical standards haven’t changed — only the tools have.

Guidelines for responsible use

01. Human oversight is mandatory

AI is a tool to assist, not replace, human creativity and decision-making. All AI-generated outputs must be reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by a human before being presented to clients or published.

02. Data security

We never enter sensitive data into any AI system unless the tool has been specifically vetted and approved.

03. Client transparency

Without exception, we disclose all AI use to clients when working on their projects. Some clients may have specific policies regarding the use of AI in their work.

04. Accountability

We are 100% accountable for the final output of any AI tool we use, including any errors, biases, or compliance issues.

05. Approved tools

Currently, we only use the following AI tools:

  • ChatGPT from OpenAI
  • Claude from Anthropic
  • Gemini from Google

All new tools are thoroughly tested, investigated, and vetted before use.

Training and review

By adhering to these guidelines, we can leverage the power of AI while maintaining our professional standards and client trust. All employees will receive initial and ongoing training on the ethical and secure use of AI. Employee acknowledgment of these AI standards is required upon review.

Policy updates

This AI policy is a living document and will be reviewed and updated regularly to keep pace with technological and regulatory changes.

Side Note

5 things you need to know about ChatGPT:

  1. It must respond to all prompts. “I don’t know” is not an option.
  2. When it doesn’t know, it makes stuff up.
  3. It’s a supreme suck-up. It wants to please you more than help you.
  4. It has no concept of true or false, right and wrong, better or worse, good and evil.
  5. It can’t possibly know the truth, because it has no concept of what it means to “know.”

People think that AI is this magical machine that responds to prompts in milliseconds by scouring the universe for facts — all for $20 a month. Nope.

Ask an AI chatbot a question and it assembles a response based on the probability that certain words and phrases should be strung together in coherent sentences. It’s essentially doing high-level word association based on statistical patterns. It’s math, not magic.

And where do chatbots get all of this content? They steal it from the internet. They scour the web for articles, books, images, video, social media posts, anything — and they harvest it all without permission.

In other words, these large language models (LLMs) you’re constantly reading about are made up of original content created by you and me, then stolen by billionaires and sold back to us as a subscription. Capitalism at its finest.

There, now you know how AI works.

Page revised: May 10, 2026 at 5:54:20 PM PDT