Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now – and if you’ve spent any time on the internet recently, you’ll know that opinions on it range from “it’s going to save us all” to “it’s going to eat our jobs for breakfast.” The truth, as ever, is somewhere in the middle.
I use AI tools in my business. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, especially given that helping clients implement AI sensibly is part of what I do. But “using AI” covers a multitude of sins, and you deserve to know exactly what that means in practice – particularly when you’re trusting me with your business information.
The short version: AI assists my work, it doesn’t replace my judgement. Everything that leaves my desk has been checked by an actual human (me). Your data and confidential information are handled carefully, and I won’t pop them into an AI tool without your knowledge and agreement.
The longer version is below. It’s been produced under licence from KoffeeKlatch, specialists in policies and contracts for the virtual services industry, and it covers everything from data privacy to copyright in proper detail.
If you have any questions about specific tools I use, or how I handle anything related to your business, just ask – I’d rather have that conversation than leave you wondering.
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Who are we
| Name | Carolyn Nicholson Virtual Support Services |
| Company registration | N/A |
| Email address | privacy@carolynnicholson.co.uk |
| Data privacy policy | Privacy Policy |
| We use AI tools for | Transcription of audio content; closed captions on video content; initial research for content projects; drafting preliminary content for blogs, articles, and other written materials; automating aspects of email marketing campaigns; research and analysis of best practices |
| Policy last updated | 02 March 2026 |
Transparency
Almost every software platform and application is including some form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its system.
In running our own business
We use mainstream software platforms to run our own business and keep an eye on what is going on. AI implemented within existing major software platforms runs within their data privacy and security policies and does not usually create a security problem or share data outside of our subscription.
If we discover there is a security breach on that software that may potentially affect your data we will notify you as soon as we find out.
Supporting your business
Where we use AI we use it to complement our work and experience not to replace it. We use our knowledge, skills and experience to ensure that we add real value to the service we offer.
We will use our best endeavours to discover whether the platform uses that learning data for anything other than improving material created for you (machine learning) and will not adopt them if they share your processes or material with a wider learning community.
If you have concerns about particular platforms and want to know if we use them for other clients, or ourselves, please don’t hesitate to ask. AI is evolving rapidly and new benefits, concerns, and risks are evolving all the time.
Human oversight
We use AI to complement our work and experience, not to replace it. We use our knowledge, skills and experience to ensure that we add real value to the service we offer. Anything created is checked by a real human being before being offered to you for you to check and approve.
Your platforms and applications
Where you give us access to your platforms and applications we rely on you to check what any AI that runs inside it or is connected with it is doing. We are not responsible for checking its security or the reliability of its output.
Data privacy
We do not put your personal data into AI applications that use it to train or generate data sets for our use or for anyone else to use.
Personal data you share with us from your data subjects will only be handled in the platforms you authorise in the Data Processing Agreement between us or as otherwise authorised in writing by you.
Confidentiality
We will not add your confidential information to any AI app or system unless this is expressly discussed and agreed beforehand.
Copyright
We understand that AI generated content does not automatically come with copyright and that any copyright material entered into an AI generation system may form part of that system’s learning and generation of material for other users.
Many AI systems do assign copyright in the work (they call it outputs) to us and where this is the case we will assign appropriate copyright to you in line with our arrangements with you.
Overall
We will not knowingly use AI in our business in a way that breaches our contractual obligations, data privacy policy or any data processing agreement issued to us.