AI Playbook for Content Teams

Overview

This is the AI policy our writers use every day, set out as a playbook you can hand to your own team. It takes a piece from brief to final edit and covers three stages.

• Before drafting, AI helps writers understand the topic and stress-test their angle.
• During drafting, AI stays closed.
• After drafting, AI works as a critic, an editor and a fact-checker. Each stage lists what writers can ask AI to do, what stays their job, and copy-ready prompts.

Why no AI first drafts

AI can produce a first draft in seconds, and that's the problem. The first draft is where a writer decides what they think: which point leads, which evidence counts, what to leave out. When AI makes those decisions, the article reads like slop, and editing only polishes the sentences. The playbook gives your team AI's speed everywhere except the one place it makes content generic.

What's inside

• 17 copy-ready prompts for research, briefs, expert interviews, outline critique, editing, headlines, visuals and fact-checking.
• The writer's job at every stage. What AI can suggest and what the writer still has to decide and verify.
• Ground rules. Approved tools for confidential material, no AI-supplied evidence, and logging AI use.
• The content quality checklist. The 21 checks our writers run before a draft goes to an editor or a client.
• A five-step rollout plan for content leads introducing the policy to their team.

Want the full argument? Read Should writers ever let AI draft?