Last Wednesday at 8 PM, my friend Ailin got blindsided in our group chat
Last Wednesday at 8 PM, my friend Ailin broke down in our group—a client flat-out asked if her proposal was AI-written. She froze for three seconds, then mumbled something about "referencing industry materials." I know that panic. When I landed my first coaching client, they asked me point-blank: "Did you use ChatGPT to draft this?" I instinctively denied it and regretted it the whole night. The truth is, clients fear being hidden from—not the fact that you used AI.
This isn't just Ailin's problem—the whole industry is faking it
a16z (Andreessen Horowitz, the VC fund most aggressive on AI) published a survey last month: they reviewed public materials from 100+ companies on AI usage, and only 2% honestly wrote out "here's what AI does for us." The other 98% either pretended they don't use it, or buried the answer in vague corporate-speak.
But here's the twist: a batch of small teams is doing the opposite. A small NYC design studio I follow now appends a line to every deliverable: "AI-assisted initial draft, 40% human-edited." An SEO micro-team put a full AI policy doc right on their About page. Founder Jamie tweeted: "Clients trust me more now—because I'm not pretending."
You can copy this today
- Money: $0
- Time: 30 minutes to write your own "AI usage statement"
- Technical barrier: zero—if you can type, you can do this
- First step: open your most recent delivered project and write down which parts you used AI for, which parts you did yourself, and what you changed at the end
My mistake was writing it too "official"—5 bullet points nobody read. Then I copied Jamie's style: three plain-English paragraphs. What I use AI for. What I won't let AI touch. Who's responsible if something breaks.
Advice by stage
Just starting out (no clients yet): Don't sweat this now. But build the muscle anyway—every time AI helps you write something, jot a quick note: "this part was AI-generated, I changed X." Future-you will thank present-you.
Got 1–2 clients: Strongly suggest writing your AI statement this week. Keep it short—three paragraphs is plenty. My template: "I use AI for first drafts and research, but every deliverable gets human review; client data never gets fed into public AI tools; tell me in advance if you'd rather I don't use AI." Send it over—usually they think you're more serious, not less.
Scaling up (team forming): This stops being a personal statement and becomes a "team AI policy." You need rules: which roles can use AI, what client data can't be uploaded, who's on the hook when AI hallucinates. Google "AI policy template for small agency," grab an online doc, tweak it, ship it.
One last thing: not everyone needs this. If your clients never ask, drafting a formal statement just looks performative. But the moment one client asks you "is this AI?"—that night, you'll think of Ailin. Writing it early beats scrambling after the question. Way more comfortable.