The Standard · Legal, Risk and Compliance
Ethical AI Use in Practice
Applies AI ethically in practice: consent, fairness, transparency and knowing when not to use it.
You use AI to draft, assess, recommend or communicate while weighing consent, fairness, transparency and accountability. An assistant can expose personal data, reproduce unfair patterns or invent assurance, so you keep high-stakes judgement with people.
The exam for Ethical AI Use in Practice is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Ethical AI Use in Practice, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to surface affected groups, consent gaps and disclosure needs your ethical review would otherwise miss.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with affected people, ethical purpose, source obligations and the required risk-and-disclosure format.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into an ethical-use recommendation with clear reasoning, safeguards and audience-appropriate disclosure.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check the reply’s fairness claims, consent assumptions and disclosure advice against supplied evidence before use.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal, confidential and commercially sensitive data out of the tool and refuse requests that would expose it.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You keep high-stakes ethical decisions with named people, share only confirmed facts and explain the required approval.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A fairness review of an AI-assisted recommendation using representative cases and stated decision criteria.
- 02
A privacy and consent note for an AI workflow handling personal or commercially sensitive information.
- 03
A disclosure and oversight plan for an AI-generated professional communication or high-stakes decision.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in ethical AI use in practice. They briefed the assistant with consent limits, caught unfair recommendations, and delivered a transparent, privacy-safe review.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Ethical AI Use in Practice
- Who it is for
- Compliance professionals, risk managers, auditors, legal advisers and accountable operational leads using AI at work.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Document Review
Reviews documents with AI at scale and catches what the tool misses or invents.
Practice only
- Risk Management
Identifies and weighs risks with AI's help and owns the call on each one.
- Regulatory Affairs
Tracks and interprets regulation with AI and verifies every citation before relying on it.
- Contract Review
Reviews contracts with AI, confirms every clause against the text and escalates what matters.
- ESG & Sustainability Reporting
Prepares ESG and sustainability reporting with AI, with every metric evidenced.
- Quality Assurance
Uses AI in quality assurance to find defects and never to sign off on its own.
- Monitoring & Evaluation
Designs monitoring and evaluation with AI and validates indicators against real data.
Everything in Legal, Risk and Compliance, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Ethical AI Use in Practice covers this skill. No book is required to pass.