Digital Dismissiveness: When Using AI Becomes Disrespectful

This blog will not tell business owners and nonprofit organizations to stop using artificial intelligence.

Digital tools help organizations get more done in less time. The use of AI to create print and digital materials continues to grow, and tools like ChatGPT, along with applications that have AI features embedded in them, have made it possible to write content, generate ideas, and even create flyers in minutes.

That level of convenience can be helpful.

But what happens when convenience causes an important step to be missed?

Have organizations considered how artificial intelligence could harm what they are building? What happens when AI is used in a way that unintentionally disrespects employees, guest speakers, clients, community members, or other people represented in the final product?

There is a difference between using AI to improve efficiency and using AI in a way that dismisses human input, preferences, consent, and professional judgment.

That is digital dismissiveness.

Digital dismissiveness happens when an organization becomes so focused on what technology can do that it stops considering whether it should be done, how it affects others, or whether the people involved are comfortable with the result.

Here are three ways businesses and nonprofit organizations can avoid digital dismissiveness when using artificial intelligence.

1. Ask for Permission Before Using AI

When creating an event flyer, promotional graphic, presentation, or other public-facing material, start with professional and approved images whenever possible.

Give guest speakers, presenters, honorees, board members, community partners, employees, and other individuals featured in marketing materials the opportunity to provide the photo they want used.

Artificial intelligence makes this step even more important.

Technology should not automatically create permission to alter someone else's appearance.

Touch-ups, enhancements, clothing changes, background changes, facial alterations, body changes, or other significant modifications to a person's image should not be made without that person's knowledge and consent.

AI is not always accurate, but accuracy is only one part of the issue.

People have different preferences about how they want to be represented publicly. Some people may be comfortable with minor edits. Others may not want their appearance altered at all.

Before publishing a flyer, advertisement, social media graphic, presentation, or other material featuring another person, send the draft for approval.

Give that person an opportunity to review how their name, title, image, and likeness are being presented.

This principle extends beyond professional marketing. AI-edited images are becoming increasingly common in personal photos, event pictures, group images, and social media posts. Before altering and sharing someone's image, consider whether that person has agreed to the changes.

Do not assume everyone wants a touch-up. Do not assume everyone wants to look younger, thinner, smoother, taller, or simply different. Respect the person instead of allowing technology to dismiss that person's preferences.

2. Trust Human Judgment

Artificial intelligence is a tool designed to assist and guide. It should not replace human judgment.

Every AI-generated piece of content should still pass a basic test:

• Does it look right?

• Does it sound right?

• Does it make sense?

• Does it accurately represent the organization?

Business owners, nonprofit leaders, marketing professionals, and communications teams bring something artificial intelligence cannot fully replicate: lived experience, organizational knowledge, audience awareness, context, professional judgment, and accountability. Those things still matter.

If an AI tool provides a recommendation that does not fit the organization, challenge it.

If the wording does not sound like the brand, change it. If an image does not appropriately represent the audience, do not use it. If something feels insensitive, inaccurate, confusing, or simply wrong, investigate it before moving forward.

Artificial intelligence can provide an answer in seconds, but that does not automatically make it the right answer. The organization's name and reputation will be attached to the final product, not the AI tool that helped create it.

Human judgment still has to lead.

3. Review Before Releasing

The faster content can be created, the easier it becomes to skip the review process.

That is where many problems begin.

AI-generated content should never move directly from a prompt to the public without human review.

Read the email before sending it. Review the flyer before posting it. Check the presentation before presenting it. Read the meeting agenda before distributing it.

Review meeting minutes before they become part of an organization's official records. Look carefully at every person represented in an AI-generated or AI-edited image before publishing it.

Check names, dates, titles, locations, links, statistics, quotes, contact information, and other factual details. For nonprofit organizations in particular, professional communication extends far beyond social media.

Communications may include board documents, donor correspondence, community announcements, grant materials, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, presentations, newsletters, reports, volunteer communications, event materials, and stakeholder updates.

AI can help create many of these materials faster.

Speed does not remove the responsibility to review.

AI may help create the first draft, but a person should still take responsibility for the final product.

Efficiency Should Not Cost Humanity

Artificial intelligence is not the problem. Careless use of artificial intelligence is.

Businesses and nonprofit organizations should continue learning how to use AI effectively because these tools are becoming a normal part of marketing, communications, operations, and daily work.

But learning how to use AI responsibly requires more than learning how to write a better prompt.

Technology should support communication, not remove the human consideration from it.

When an organization is communicating with people, representing people, serving people, or building relationships with people, efficiency cannot be the only goal.

Before publishing the next AI-assisted flyer, email, image, presentation, or document, one final question should be considered:

Is artificial intelligence helping the organization communicate better, or is convenience creating digital dismissiveness?