Our use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools

The SLCC uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance staff productivity and efficiency and to support analysis and decision-making. This page explains how AI works and how we use it.

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence refers to any system that can demonstrate human intelligence capabilities like reasoning and learning. This could include visual perception, speech recognition or translation. Some types of AI can be used to create new text, images, video, audio or code. This is called generative AI (gen AI). 

The risks and benefits of using AI

AI has significant potential to help enhance our productivity and efficiency. It can help to understand, summarise, predict, and generate content, freeing up staff time for tasks only humans can or should perform.  

However, there are also risks to using AI. It can replicate and amplify human errors and biases. It can also make things up or misinterpret things.   

Principles

We want to ensure that our use of AI balances effectiveness with ethics. 

AI is a tool to support our work – it does not replace human input, and it must only be used with human oversight.  

AI can inform but not make decisions.  

We will only use AI to perform appropriate tasks when it:  

  • is for the public good  
  • benefits our service users  
  • helps us to deliver our strategic priorities and  
  • is in line with our values.  

We will be transparent about our use of AI.  

We will ensure strong governance supports our use of AI.  

Any use we make of AI will respect individual privacy rights and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.  

Governance

We will take all reasonable and practical steps to ensure that any AI system we design or use functions in a safe, secure and robust way, minimising the risk of harm to individuals or society. We have policies in place to ensure robust testing, validation and monitoring of AI use and outputs. We will identify and assess potential risks, taking appropriate steps to mitigate and monitor these.

How we use AI

We use AI to enhance staff productivity and efficiency. This includes:  

  • generating material for meetings 
  • summarising emails, documents, text and highlighting key themes or messages 
  • locating information held by us or on the web 
  • creating templates or first drafts of papers or policies 
  • reviewing and sharing insight from consultation responses. 

We do not use AI to:  

  • make decisions.  

In all cases, AI use must be within the SLCC’s policy on AI use and must be checked and overseen by a human. 

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a type of AI assistant that helps create, analyse, and automate tasks securely within the SLCC Microsoft environment. It does not retain SLCC data or share it externally, ensuring privacy and compliance at all times.  

We may use Microsoft 365 Copilot to support our work dealing with individual complaints. We do not use any other AI in this work. 

You can read our Privacy Notice or contact us for more information. 

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