Module 7 Practice: Ethics & AI — Building a Responsible Content Creation Plan

Complete During Live Class

This is a guided, discussion-based activity that we will complete together during our live class session. You do not need to complete anything ahead of time, and there is no written submission required.

During class, you will work through realistic decisions involving copyright, disclosure, privacy, bias, accessibility, provenance, and human oversight. We will use a fictional organization as a framework for discussing what responsible AI use should look like in practice.

Guidelines

Purpose:
Responsible AI content creation requires more than producing accurate or visually appealing output. Creators also need to consider copyright, human authorship, source rights, disclosure, privacy, bias, accessibility, provenance, and human accountability. During our live class session, we will explore these issues by building a Responsible AI Content Use Plan for a fictional brand or organization. The goal is to apply the legal and ethical principles introduced throughout Module 7 to realistic content-creation decisions.

🛠️ What You’ll Need:

Access to the Module 7 lecture and case studies.
A fictional brand, business, nonprofit organization, educational organization, or creative team to use during the activity.
Access to ChatGPT for exploring scenarios and generating examples when appropriate.
Access to authoritative resources discussed during the module, such as the U.S. Copyright Office, platform policies, government agencies, or professional organizations.

✅ Live Class Activity:

During class, we will build a responsible AI content-use plan together. You will consider each area below and discuss the decisions your fictional organization should make before using or publishing AI-assisted content.

Describe the organization. Choose a fictional brand or organization and consider the types of content it creates, who its audience is, and where that content may be published.
Establish guidelines for copyright and human authorship. Discuss:
- how AI may appropriately be used during the creative process
- how source and reference materials should be reviewed before use
- how creators can avoid unnecessarily reproducing protected characters, branded properties, or distinctive creative designs
- why meaningful human contribution and creative decision-making still matter when AI is involved
Consider AI disclosure. Discuss situations in which the organization should disclose the use of generative AI.
- When would disclosure help maintain transparency or trust?
- When might a platform, institution, employer, client, or professional setting require disclosure?
- How could the wording of a disclosure change depending on how AI was used?
Develop ethical safeguards. Consider how the organization should review AI-assisted content for:
- factual accuracy and misinformation
- bias and representation
- privacy, likeness, and consent
- authenticity and potentially misleading synthetic media
- accessibility
Explore provenance and transparency. Discuss how technical signals such as Content Credentials and other provenance indicators may help audiences understand how digital content was created or modified.
- What can provenance information tell us?
- What can it not tell us?
- Why should provenance not automatically be treated as proof of factual accuracy, copyright ownership, or ethical use?
Determine where human review is required. Identify tasks where AI could reasonably assist and decisions that should still require human approval before publication.
- What could AI help create, organize, summarize, or revise?
- What decisions should never be delegated entirely to AI?
- Who should be responsible for final approval?
Consider changing AI capabilities. Choose one current or emerging development discussed in the module, such as:
- multimodal creation
- persistent project context
- connected plugins or external tools
- automated or agentic workflows
- content provenance and labeling
Discuss one opportunity the capability creates and one safeguard that should be considered before the organization adopts it more broadly.
Evaluate a scenario as a class. We will apply the principles above to one or more realistic AI-use scenarios and determine:
- what the primary ethical or legal concern is
- what additional information would be needed before making a decision
- what role AI could appropriately play
- what human review or approval would still be necessary
Participate in the class reflection and discussion. We will conclude by discussing:
- which ethical issue was the most difficult to evaluate
- where responsible AI use requires more than simply following a rule
- how context changes what may be considered appropriate AI use
- why human accountability remains important even when AI performs much of the work
- what safeguards you would want in place before using AI in a professional content-creation workflow

💡 Tips for Success:

Keep copyrightability, infringement, licensing, and disclosure as separate questions.
Do not assume that a copyright disclaimer in a prompt automatically makes an AI-generated output legally safe.
Do not assume that detailed prompting alone establishes copyright in AI-generated expressive elements.
Describe the creative qualities you need rather than unnecessarily asking AI to reproduce a protected character, property, or distinctive design.
Use authoritative or primary sources when legal, policy, or platform guidance needs to be verified.
Remember that disclosure expectations may differ by platform, institution, workplace, client, contract, or applicable law.
Consider privacy and consent before placing personal, confidential, or protected information into an AI system.
Include accessibility throughout the content-creation process rather than treating it as an optional final step.
Ask who is responsible when AI-generated content is inaccurate, harmful, misleading, inaccessible, or inappropriate.
Remember that AI can support decision-making, but responsibility for the final content remains human.