At Voxel Hub, our mission is to support good digital wellbeing. One of the key aspects of our work is to avoid dark patterns in our design and marketing and to remain transparent about how we operate. Hence, we do not offer ebooks that link to newsletter subscriptions, and our Privacy Policy is simple and clear. We keep our client records securely, especially those related to counselling and client work, of course. However, how we work and how our marketing is organised is centred around supporting, not tricking clients into loyalty. Despite the well-established UK GDPR law, we receive offers to scale our leads and purchase mailing lists DAILY. Sometimes, when I have the time and energy to respond, I do.
Today, I am writing an important update on something that has been entering mainstream workplace processes for quite a few years and entered the general public discourse (in my experience) last year – the AI tools. This year, we are starting to see some relevant statistics on AI use and attitudes (here’s just one example); however, we do not seem to be discussing AI disclosures or policies. Most AI experts support AI disclosures. We know that consumers want AI disclosures, but are 49% less likely to buy from a brand that posts AI content. Ethan Mollick writes about another aspect of AI use: readers of AI-generated content are less likely to believe it if they know it was generated by AI.
So, what do we think at Voxel Hub? Well, as always, first thing I am going to say: it is complicated. AI tools are growing in popularity, and it can be incredibly tempting to use them for ideas and content generation to save on time, resources and energy. Managers and company owners under significant financial pressure may find AI solutions incredibly helpful. Business owners who designed their companies to exploit people for substantial gain with very little investment may find AI solutions perfect for the job.
However, I would encourage a different question: where are we rushing, and what are we saving this energy and resources for? Providing our business is ethical, and by extension, planned to allow for rest, emergency resources and supportive services, what is the ACTUAL case for the use of AI tools to hack and hack and hack? If we aim to nurture our clients’ wellbeing and calm existence, while also supporting our staff, wouldn’t it make more sense to support creatives, researchers and other team members?
My take on Voxel Hub was always clear: we are open and support the wellbeing of all our stakeholders. Our aim is to promote a healthy balance in life in the digital age. Our marketing is designed to explain who we are and what we do, and to support our clients, not to mislead them. So today, we have updated our privacy policy with the following AI Disclaimer:
“We believe in complete AI transparency. This website contains original, human-generated content unless otherwise stated. We always clearly disclose our use of AI.”
In practice, this means that you will occasionally see some AI-generated content, always explained and honestly described. We run AI experiments to test the new tools and improve our digital literacy in AI. We use Perplexity tools to sometimes co-create our content. Most of our blog content is original. Our business plan is original. Our digital wellbeing content and wellbeing scale are original – I personally developed it based on my experience and training. What you see has been created by me and my ethically paid contributor friends.
We cannot influence which AI solutions are rolled out across the core tools we use (such as Zoom, Evernote, or Canva), but given a choice, we always start with human-generated content.
We like to support creators, and we value technology too. We believe that innovation can be helpful – I am sure it is life-saving in many industries, such as medicine, transport, and research (if validated). However, for our website content, we aim to produce original, human-generated content. When you read our content, rest assured that if we ever use AI to generate it, we will inform you. If you see no AI disclaimers in our blog posts, enjoy the beautifully imperfect support from the bottom of our human hearts.
Thank you for reading us!
