What to record about each AI tool you use
Keep one short entry per tool, not one per chat. Think of a simple test. If someone asked about this tool tomorrow, what would you need to know?
The basic facts
Most of these take a minute to write down. They're the ones people forget fastest.
| What to note | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Tool name and the company that makes it | Name the exact product, so nobody has to guess which one you meant. |
| Who in the business owns the account | Someone has to answer questions and cancel it. |
| Who else uses it | Shows whether staff are using tools you didn't pick. |
| What it's used for | Drafting, summarizing, translating, sorting, answering customers. One line each. |
| Which plan or tier you're on | The terms you read should be the ones that apply to this plan. |
| Whether it's tied to a work or a personal login | A personal login is hard to take back when someone leaves. |
| Date you started using it | Gives a starting point if something changes. |
The maker's own terms say what your plan includes. Saving them is covered in keeping vendor terms and settings.
What happens to the data
This part is worth the most effort. The Australian privacy regulator suggests a business should be able to answer a question about the product's data flows before choosing it.1
It also warns that some commercial AI products have terms or settings letting the product owner collect customer input for training and development.1 So make a note of each of these.
- Whether the maker may train on what you enter, and where that's stated.
- Whether you can switch that off, and whether you did.
- Whether the tool passes your input to other services, such as a search engine.
- Which kinds of information staff are told never to enter.
The regulator also asks whether you can turn such features off, or take other steps to meet privacy duties.1 Your answer, plus the date you gave it, belongs in the entry.
Privacy rules vary by country. The OAIC wrote its guidance for Australian law. In the United States, the United Kingdom or elsewhere, look at your own regulator's pages.
Known limits
Add a line on what the tool can't do well. The OAIC asks businesses to weigh a system's limits and whether the developer has added safeguards.1 You don't need a research project. Copy what the maker's documentation says, name the page, and note the date you read it.
You can also note any house rule for the tool. No customer names, say, or no health details. Or a rule that a person must check anything leaving the business, which recording who checked AI work shows how to track.
Keep the entry alive
An old entry is worse than none, because it looks trustworthy. Date every entry. Change it when the plan, the settings or the use changes.
The Australian Taxation Office makes a related point about business records in general. Keep information about your record-keeping system.2 That's a tax rule, but it fits here. Note where the entries live, who can edit them and who reviews them.
Once you have a few entries, gather them in one table. The simple AI use log shows a layout that works in any spreadsheet.
Reference list
- Guidance on privacy and the use of commercially available AI products, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
- Overview of record-keeping rules for business, Australian Taxation Office
Keep reading
Why keep records of how your business uses AIDo you really need to write anything down about AI use? Here's what goes wrong without a record, and how small the habit can be.
A simple AI use log you can keep in a spreadsheetA plain, low-effort AI use log, with the columns it needs, a sample row, and how to keep it up without it turning into a chore.
Should you save prompts and AI outputs?When it helps to keep the exact prompt and answer from an AI tool, and when saving them adds risk instead of value.