Who signed off on that? Most brands can't say

Your editorial policy is your AI transparency policy; what it needs to include

You can't say who approved the last ten pieces of content your brand published. Or which ones AI touched, and how much. That's a governance gap on your website, unowned, waiting for someone outside your company to ask the question first.

As of August 2nd, the EU AI Act requires anyone publishing AI-generated text on matters of public interest to disclose it — unless that content went through human review and a named person holds editorial responsibility for it.

→ That exemption is the entire case for having an editorial policy.

This isn't a content problem, it's a governance problem

A CMO thinks about this as brand voice. A CEO should think about it as exposure. A competitor, a journalist, or a regulator can ask how your organization decides what gets published and how AI is involved. ‘We haven't written that down’ doesn't survive the boardroom.

An editorial policy is not a disclaimer. It's a public statement of who owns the content your brand puts into the world, and how. It converts an implicit practice, probably inconsistent, probably undocumented, into a standard anyone can check. Ownership, made visible.

It also does something quieter. It signals that AI at your organization is reviewed by a process, and led by a human. That's exactly where AI governance belongs: visible at the level where the organization takes responsibility for what it says.

Nine elements, none of them optional

A working editorial policy is short, plain and specific. It reads like a standard, not a legal shield.

A one-line stance on human ownership, stated up front, not buried in a footer
A named person or role with final editorial authority, not ‘our team’
An explicit line between what AI does (drafting, research, structure) and what stays human (judgment, verification, the final word)
A verification standard, stated without hedging. ‘Facts are checked before publication,’ not ‘checked where reasonably possible’
A correction policy: what happens when something's wrong, and how readers find out
A conflicts-of-interest line: how sponsorships, partnerships or client work are kept separate from editorial content
A sourcing standard: no fabricated quotes, no unverifiable sources, ever
A review cadence for the policy itself, with a last-reviewed date. A policy nobody revisits is a policy nobody trusts
A way to reach someone with a question or a correction

Three organizations already do this

None of these are long or read like a disclaimer. All three name state a standard, and say it plainly enough that a reader can hold them to it.

My thinklikeapublisher.com runs this at the smallest possible scale: ‘Human expertise comes first. AI is a tool. I'm the author.’
The Guardian built its policy through a cross-functional working group spanning editorial, engineering, legal and commercial teams.
Thomson Reuters has ‘Data and AI Ethics Principles’, that tie back to the company's Trust Principles, a framework older than most of its current AI tools. Governance inherited from a century of editorial credibility, applied to AI rather than invented for it.

What to do

Start with the nine points above. Check how many your brand can already answer.

The EU AI Act's disclosure rule took effect this month. Human review and a named editorial owner are what keep your content out of that requirement, a policy is how you prove both exist.

Write yours before someone asks why you don't have one. There’s no excuse left not to.