Categories
This article originally appeared online at Little Rock Soiree Magazine on May 15, 2026.
Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential for use in today’s workplace, such as creating initial drafts of correspondence, drafting employment policies and job descriptions and even screening applicants for job positions. But there are hidden landmines for AI use in the workplace.
Taking & Summarizing Meeting Notes
Using AI to take or summarize meeting notes sounds like a no-brainer, but:
- If the meeting is taking place in Arkansas, has at least one person (and that can be the person with the recording device) in the meeting given consent? Other states may require everyone to give consent.
- AI isn’t perfect. Always have someone review the notes or summary to ensure it’s accurate. In fact, that goes for any AI-generated material. AI is a tool for humans to use, not a replacement for humans.
- If you use AI as a notetaker, who else has access to the content that was uploaded? Look at the terms and conditions of your AI program (it should tell you who has access). It could be a lot of people.
Hiring & Discrimination Issues
If you are using an AI-enabled program to assist in the hiring process, ask yourself:
- If the AI ranks candidates, or even provides input on candidates, has the vendor done enough to vet the AI in terms of bias testing/validation studies? AI “learns” from data fed to it, including data on past employment decisions, and if that data includes some questionable or even biased decisions, then the AI will inherit and make those same questionable or biased decisions. It’s the old principle: junk in, junk out. And you are on the hook, not the vendor, if the AI-enabled program makes a discriminatory decision.
- Additionally, has the vendor (and the AI program) jumped through the right hoops in terms of the Fair Credit Reporting Act? If the AI program is pulling information from beyond the application and resume (such as from LinkedIn, social media, even online court dockets), then it’s probably a “consumer reporting agency” under federal law. That requires certain types of notices to and authorizations from the applicants, the same types of things you do when you use a third-party vendor to run criminal background reports on applicants.
Employees Using AI
While your employees are probably using AI right now for work-related reasons, consider:
- Privacy and confidentiality concerns. Some AI-enabled “wearables” like glasses take pictures and video and can even stream directly to the internet. Do you want this in your confidential business meetings or your bathrooms?
- Prohibiting the creation of discriminatory or harassing content. Do you want an employee to use AI to harass your other employees, customers or vendors? AI-generated content used to harass is not any “less real” to the victim of harassment.
- And don’t upload into AI any confidential or non-public information concerning your business, your customers or your vendors. Again, read the terms and conditions of any AI program to find out just who might have access to that uploaded information. Your employees might in effect be making your confidential information public and even waiving some type of privilege, like the attorney-client privilege.
Governing AI in Your Workplace
These landmines are manageable, but only if someone is paying attention. Sound AI governance isn’t just an IT project, it’s a cross-functional effort. The businesses best positioned to use AI productively and responsibly are those that include operations, human resources, IT and, critically, legal counsel. Lawyers aren’t just there to review contracts after the fact. They’re there to spot the discrimination exposure in your hiring tool before a charge gets filed, to flag the trade secret issue before the recording starts and to read the terms and conditions that nobody else wants to read.
AI governance involves having thoughtful, specific AI policies and guidance that tells your employees what they can use, what they can’t, what data can never go into an AI tool and what happens if they get it wrong. Without that foundation, every productivity gain AI offers comes with legal and reputational risk riding alongside it.
AI can provide a great productivity boost to your business, freeing up you and your employees from doing certain basic tasks. But AI is far from perfect, and you need to understand just what it can and can’t do at this stage of the game.
Stuart Jackson practices employment law with the Little Rock-based law firm Wright Lindsey Jennings. Meredith Lowry is a patent attorney with WLJ in Rogers and has a particular focus on technology, privacy and AI governance. This article is for information use only and is not intended to offer specific legal or tax advice.