Six questions before you buy an AI tool
Every vendor now has AI features. A few direct questions tell you what happens to your data.
Almost every software vendor has added AI this year, and most sales decks say “enterprise-grade security”. These questions get past the slogan:
- Is our data used to train or improve models? Get the answer in the contract, not a blog post.
- Which model providers do you send it to, and in which countries is it processed and stored?
- How long are prompts, files and outputs kept, and can we delete them?
- What can the AI feature access? Only what the user can see, or more?
- Can we turn the AI features off, for everyone or for some groups?
- How do you handle prompt injection if the AI reads emails, documents or web pages?
If the answers are vague, that’s an answer too. For anything touching client or personal data, have legal read the AI terms, which are often a separate document from the main contract.