Some marketers and communicators are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help them do their jobs. As society adapts to the changes caused by AI, UComm is providing AI usage guidance that applies to anyone creating communications or marketing materials on behalf of NC State.

Follow these overarching guidelines to ensure AI is a help rather than a hindrance:

1. NC State is a human institution. As a public, land-grant university, our work depends on the trust we build and maintain with constituents. When we use AI tools to help us communicate, we are fully accountable for the accuracy and quality of the tools’ output. All our work must honor the expertise — and uphold the values — of the university and its people.
2. Make sure a human always reviews your work before publication. AI tools can help with the early and middle portions of a project, such as brainstorming ideas, organizing and summarizing meeting notes, and analyzing analytics data. If you use generative AI to create content consumed by constituents, make sure a human expert reviews and edits it — and that it does not look or read like generic “AI slop” that anyone could have produced.
3. Remember that AI can’t think. It relies on statistical probabilities of what kind of content usually appears in relation to other content. Unlike spreadsheets and other computer programs that will always produce a deterministic answer, generative AI tools deal in probabilities, not certainties.
4. The final result is your responsibility, not the AI’s. AI can be immensely helpful, but you are ultimately responsible for how its output is used.
5. AI is a novel — and polarizing — technology. Remember that constituents may have strong positive or negative feelings about the emergence and impact of AI, and those feelings may be changing day by day. In every case, consider whether the speed and ease of generating content with AI tools is worth the potential risks to our institutional reputation.

Overview

Using AI for Communications

AI can help with many different job duties. The suggestions below are not exhaustive, due to the constantly evolving nature of available AI tools and systems.

It is important to remember that AI tools are assistive, not autonomous. They are writing, brainstorming and content aids. They cannot replace the role and importance of the human in these tasks.

Imagery, Video and other Visual Content

• Do not generate NC State visual assets, logos or marks: Never use AI to generate or recreate logos and marks that signify the university. Not only can this result in trademark issues; it can also cause confusion and dilute the NC State brand. Do not generate wolves, mascots, campus landmarks or other NC State imagery or symbols that our constituents cherish.
• Follow brand guidelines for visual identity: The visual identity of NC State’s brand is rooted in flat, mid-century modern motifs, and AI-generated content should follow the same visual identity guidelines as any other university communication material. Importantly, this includes color and typography.
• Don’t misrepresent: Just as with non-AI content, make sure you do not misrepresent NC State and its work. This includes, but is not limited to, making sure you don’t generate images of individuals, buildings or campus locations that don’t exist, and that you don’t meaningfully alter the appearance of real people or places.
• Use built-in tools: Photo editing applications increasingly have AI-powered tools that allow for easy image touch-ups. This is a great and encouraged use of AI technology, but these tools should not be used to give a false impression of NC State or our people.
• Ask: If you aren’t sure whether generated visuals might run afoul of university guidelines and policies, ask the UComm AI working group (ucomm-ai-group@ncsu.edu) to provide more context.

Writing and Content Creation

• Brainstorming new story ideas: AI can help you generate fresh story ideas, and it can offer a different perspective or provide constructive feedback on existing concepts for content.
• Creating an outline: AI can help organize content ideas into a cohesive structure, though a human should still review and approve this outline.
• Editorial calendar/content plan: AI can help you quickly organize and plan your content and social media calendars.
• Helping with headers, headlines and other content structure and navigation: AI tools can help you identify common themes and provide draft ideas for headlines, subheads, website headers, H3 tags, etc.
• Anticipating potential questions or objections: If you’re making a pitch or proposal, ask an AI tool to behave like an investigative journalist and suggest potential questions or objections from stakeholders so you can prepare responses in advance.
• Assisting as an editor: AI tools can answer questions about editorial style. However, remember that some tools may not have access to the most recent version of regularly updated style guides and may not routinely follow NC State’s editorial style.
• Serving as a thesaurus: AI tools can help you judiciously identify alternatives to a given word, phrase or section of content.

Website and Digital Channel Management

• Search engine optimization (SEO): AI tools in the marketing and communications realm can quickly assist with keyword research and help analyze factors like readability, keyword usage and relevancy to improve webpage quality and performance.
• Helping draft social media posts: AI tools can create quick first drafts of social media posts. They can also help you tailor existing social media posts, comments, etc., to different audiences and drive engagement. A human must ultimately review and edit these posts.
• Personalizing messaging: AI tools can be adept at helping you rework your content to reach different audiences, such as students, staff, faculty, donors or the media. They can make suggestions for how to change language, shorten text or emphasize different targeted messages.
• Repurposing content: Paste content that’s too long into an AI tool and ask it to identify areas you could cut. It will look for repetitions or places where shorter phrases would suffice. Note that humans should still review these suggestions, especially because the tool may suggest changes to quotes or adjust factual information.

General Productivity

• Enhancing productivity: If you follow NC State’s privacy and data security policies, AI tools can help you with routine tasks such as transcribing interviews, analyzing data or drafting outlines and text for presentations or publication. However, it is important to evaluate the resulting output to ensure it meets professional standards for accuracy and quality and will help achieve unit and institutional strategic goals without creating reputational risk. For example, AI may be able to help you draft emails, but you should always review and edit AI-generated copy before disseminating it to your intended audience. In short, it is vital to treat AI as an assistant that helps you do your job, not a robot that does your job for you. For a cautionary example of a misuse of AI, see this news story about Vanderbilt University using AI to write an all-campus email after a mass shooting.
• Meeting summaries: NC State Zoom accounts allow you to automatically generate meeting summaries and other meeting-related assets. This can be helpful for recalling discussions and understanding next steps that were assigned. This functionality can be enabled within an individual’s Zoom account. If you do use meeting summaries, be sure to notify all meeting participants — and turn off the functionality for any meeting in which confidential information may be discussed.
• Google Workspace business productivity tool: Google Gemini can be used directly within Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive to assist with and streamline common daily tasks.

Responsible AI Use

All AI content that is used in an end product (e.g., an annual report, a news story, even an internal email) should be thoroughly reviewed and edited by a human. Using AI to simply generate user-facing content is almost always discouraged. Instead, AI should be leveraged as a tool to assist during the content development process. Examples are how to use AI in this manner are available within the “AI Uses to Consider” section.

The items below enumerate more specific scenarios to consider:

• University policies: AI tools should not be used in any way that would violate existing university standards or policies, such as communicating falsehoods (knowingly or otherwise), spamming/phishing or manipulating data to create a false impression.
• University data management requirements: In general, any AI tool that you submit information to in the process of using it — such as asking a question for research or providing a prompt for output — might retain that information and use it to help train the tool. That means you should always be very careful about entering information into any AI tool because the tool will likely not guarantee the security or privacy of that data. NC State’s Office of Information Technology has approved a list of AI tools that can be used with green (not sensitive) and yellow (moderately sensitive) data as defined by OIT’s Data Management Framework. When using these approved AI tools, all data is protected and is not used to train public models. You must use your NC State account with these AI tools; personal accounts are not allowed to be used with university data.
• Fact-checking: AI tools can be valuable research assistants, but they may “hallucinate” and suggest facts and sources that sound plausible but are partially or entirely inaccurate. Humans should verify all AI-provided facts, and human review must be an integral component of all research, planning and content creation.
• Brand compliance: Like all content created on behalf of NC State, any content created with the help of AI must comply with all relevant university policies, rules and regulations, such as RUL 01.25.01 – NC State Brand Use and Protection. Content created with the help of AI must also adhere to NC State’s brand guidelines governing such matters as fonts, colors, design conventions, logo usage, editorial style, and voice and tone.
• Public records: Assume any data entered into an AI tool could be made public through a public records request, in accordance with state and federal law.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or would like to partner with UComm on any AI-related projects or initiatives, reach out to UComm’s AI working group (ucomm-ai-group@ncsu.edu).

AH

Alastair Hadden

Acting Executive Director of Marketing

aghadden@ncsu.edu

RM

Rachel Montesinos Jorro

Director of Public Relations

919-515-5691 rmontes@ncsu.edu

ST

Scott Thompson

Director of Web Services

csthomp2@ncsu.edu

BW

Brent Winter

Director of Editorial Services

bhwinter@ncsu.edu