We view AI as a tool and a partner.
Like electronic typewriters, personal computers, and smartphones that have come before, AI is a powerful technology that can augment our productivity.
For us, it’s an opportunity to dedicate more time towards strategic thinking. That means less time spent mulling over tactical decisions, and more time spent aligning our work with your goals. Ultimately, it means more value for our clients.
Generative AI is not an invitation to cut corners.
As with any new, evolving tool, we reevaluate our use regularly. Is it effective? Are we maximizing the latest use cases? Are we delivering higher quality outputs and outcomes in less time? Are we using the technology sensibly and ethically? Are we keeping our people at the center of our work?
These questions—this constant striving for better, more thoughtful use—are the foundation of our AI philosophy.
The Risks We Mitigate
Bias and Accuracy
Datasets used in AI platforms are full of potentially harmful or inaccurate content. That content may perpetuate harmful stereotypes, privilege certain groups or ideas over others, or mischaracterize facts and events. Scanning for biases and inaccuracies is part of our internal review process.
Privacy
Some AI tools incorporate your chatbot inputs into its training data. This means identifying information might become viewable to unintended users. We only use AI tools and subscriptions that keep inputs out of training data.
Security
Many AI tools are now available at enterprise scale and in web development. The whole point of these tools is to access your organization’s proprietary information and code, then use them to perform or duplicate tasks. We only use and recommend reputable tools with strong security protocols.
Ownership and Copyright
Current federal guidance makes ownership of an AI output murky. You have to make substantial manual changes to the output to claim copyright. For many projects, such as standard campaign materials, copyright protection may not be necessary. We’re careful when using AI on deliverables that will require ownership and copyrights.
Environmental Concerns
The massive server rooms where AI systems “live” consume a lot of energy. It’s important to use an AI system efficiently and responsibly. While experimentation and iteration are foundational facets of AI use, we keep our AI use focused on the work at hand.
Our AI Values
Like everything else we do at Mighty Citizen, we’re guided by values that reflect who we are and how we approach our work. We strive to be open about our AI usage, deliberate in our quality control, and responsible with our inputs.
Our AI values include transparency and accountability.
How We Use AI
In each of the following use-case frameworks, we only use approved AI tools that offer the protections outlined above.
For creative work
Most of our AI use comes early in creative projects. We use it to help develop initial ideas—moodboards, taglines, campaign concepts, etc. We sometimes use it to make very minor adjustments to creative work, such as rephrasing a sentence or editing the background of a purchased stock image.
| Our use cases: | |
|---|---|
| Ideation | We use some AI to boost our brainstorming. You may see an AI-generated “proof of concept” when we present the first round of ideas. |
| Concept development | We may use some AI to develop or refine a concept based on your feedback. |
Final creative work | Final creative work may have placeholder elements that are AI-generated. When necessary, we’ll make sure you can take full legal ownership of the work. |
For project management
Everyone at our agency participates in meetings. Sometimes, they’re internal to sync on project progress. Sometimes, they’re with clients like you. We add value to our work by using AI tools to transcribe and summarize discussions.
| Our use cases: | |
|---|---|
| Meetings and summaries | AI tools are used to record and transcribe the meeting. Then we use AI to generate takeaways and summaries. Every summary is reviewed by someone who was in the meeting—usually a project manager or coordinator—to make sure it’s accurate. |
Scheduling and correspondence | Some of our project managers and coordinators use AI to assist with scheduling or correspondence. This helps us more quickly find dates for meetings and respond to requests or questions in a more timely manner. |
For research
AI tools are great for jumpstarting research. They can provide serviceable overviews of industries, markets, audiences, and subjects. Many tools even cite the source material for easier verification of the outputs. We utilize AI tools to assist with conducting, summarizing, and understanding research.
| Our use cases: | |
|---|---|
| Initial research | We use some AI to gain a broad understanding of an audience, industry, or marketing channel. |
| Research analysis | We may use AI to surface some initial insights from raw data. As with creative work, this is just to get the ball rolling. |
| Final reports | All final assessments and recommendations that make it into a report are fully vetted by our in-house experts. Our reports are human-made, only using AI as a writing assistant to help us simplify the language and make it more concise. |
For web development
Anyone who’s seen raw code knows it can be complicated and repetitive. AI coding assistants can offer real-time suggestions, check for errors, and even provide blocks of code. This can measurably reduce the amount of time spent writing, checking, and improving code. As with any coding, we check for errors throughout the entire process.
| Our use cases: | |
|---|---|
| Initial coding | We use some AI to create small blocks of code. We may also, in close collaboration with our clients, add AI features to their CMS to improve their content development. |
| Refining | We use some AI to create code. |
| Documentation | We use some AI to generate documentation for how and why code works. |
For strategic marketing
Strategic marketing considers many different factors—users, channels, metrics, traffic, timing, SEO, etc. AI can help a strategist make broad assessments, test assumptions, and develop a framework for marketing success.
| Our use cases: | |
|---|---|
| Data gathering | We use some AI-enabled tools to help us gather data about users and their habits. |
| Assessment | We use some AI to help us make sense of and organize our findings. |
| Strategy development | We do not use AI to draft strategies for our clients. We draft our strategies based on our carefully vetted findings. |
| Content improvements | We may use AI to improve content in minor, tactical ways. Examples include quickly generating alt text for images, or optimizing an ad for a specific channel. |
Access our AI Resources
You’ll learn more about:
- If your organization needs an AI policy
- How to draft an AI policy
- Tips for AI prompt engineering
- What generative AI can and can’t do for your organization
- AI search best practices
Always Improving With Care
Putting people first has always been a core goal of Mighty Citizen. Our AI philosophy and our internal policies were crafted with input from our entire team. We want to ensure we can deliver more value to clients and more utility to our workflows without sacrificing our commitment to improving lives.
As with everything we do, we’ll continue to search for what’s next, ask ourselves how to better serve our mission-driven clients, and center everything we do on improving lives—responsibly and with great care.
Got more questions about how we leverage AI to help clients achieve their goals? Shoot us an email. Our trained, thoughtful human experts would love to help. We’d also be happy to advise you on your own organization’s AI use.