Use AI with client work without breaking client trust
An agency holds other businesses' secrets. Unreleased campaigns, product launches, and ad account numbers all pass through your team, and a designer pasting a confidential brief into a free AI tool puts that trust at risk. We set simple rules for what client material AI may see, which tools are approved, and how you tell clients about it. Your team keeps using AI, and you can answer the client question with confidence.
Get your AI Starter Plan
Where an agency needs AI rules
Confidential client material
Unreleased campaigns and product details only go into AI tools set up on your agency's own accounts.
Client disclosure
A short, plain statement of how your studio uses AI, for proposals and for clients who ask.
Ad and analytics access
AI helpers read client numbers through their own limited access, never a team member's full login.
Approved tools
A short list of AI tools your team may use, with a one-page guide for freelancers and new starters.
Where the risk sits
In a small agency, client material moves fast. A brief for an unreleased product lands in the inbox. A freelancer pastes it into their own AI account to start on copy. Someone shares a screenshot of a client’s ad results in a chat tool to draft a report. None of it is meant badly, but the agency can no longer say where a client’s confidential work has been.
The rules we put in place
Using AI safely (the industry calls it AI governance) means a few clear rules your team and freelancers follow without having to think hard. We list what client material can and can’t go into AI, set up approved tools on your agency’s accounts, and give AI helpers their own limited access to client numbers. We also write a short statement of how your studio uses AI, for proposals and for clients who ask. A one-page guide sits beside it for every new starter.
How the safe parts look at Saltbush
We work with Saltbush Studio, a six-person design agency in Fremantle, where an AI helper drafts Friday updates for twelve retainer clients from Asana. All twelve now take the director under an hour. When we tried the team’s Slack chat as a second source, it put jokes and half-made decisions into client drafts, so Slack came out. Choosing what an AI helper reads, and what it doesn’t, is most of what safe use means in an agency.
What rules can’t cover
Rules help only when people follow them, and a guide can’t stop a freelancer using their own account. We make the safe way the easy way, but your agency owns the decision. We also don’t give legal advice, so questions about contracts or ownership go to your adviser.
To see where your agency’s AI use needs tightening, get your AI Starter Plan and tell it which tools your team uses.
Related
Read about our Using AI safely service, and how we help small teams in marketing and creative agencies.
Common questions
Do we have to tell clients we use AI?
Can freelancers use our AI tools?
Who owns AI-assisted work?
What does it cost?
Where does client data live?
Get a straight answer for your clients
Tell us which AI tools your team already uses and what client work goes through them. Get your AI Starter Plan and you'll see what to tighten first.
Get your AI Starter Plan