What are the rules about using AI in my business?
If a court, client, or regulator would care about something you do manually, they care about it when AI does it. Client confidentiality clauses don't care that the contract was pasted into a chatbot instead of emailed to a competitor. PII rules like GDPR and CCPA apply the same way, and healthcare businesses carry HIPAA obligations no chatbot plan exempts you from.
The patchwork is the new problem
Six in ten small businesses now worry about a state-by-state patchwork of AI and privacy laws — different rules for AI in hiring, in decisions about people, in data handling, depending on where you operate. Some states already require disclosure or human review when AI influences decisions that affect people. Congress keeps debating a federal standard; don't wait for it.
The 15-minute compliance kit
Every AI tool your team uses, including the AI features already inside software you pay for. Update it quarterly.
What data never goes into a prompt: client identifiers, contracts, payment details, employee records, credentials. One page, concrete examples.
A person reviews anything AI-produced before it reaches a customer or drives a decision about a person. This is the part regulators keep circling.
Key point — One named person owns this, not a committee. In a small business it's usually the owner or the operations lead. If nobody owns it, nobody's doing it.
