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Unlocking the Value of AI-Ready Content: Navigating Regulatory Compliance

Navigating regulatory compliance AI ready content Blog post image

Nov 14, 2024

This past year has seen a fast-evolving regulatory landscape, especially with AI regulations coming into effect for several countries, and in development for many more. However, AI regulations are often affected by other regulations that can affect a business, creating a knock-on effect for teams that produce “enabling content” – that is, content that helps users get things done:

product content that enables potential buyers to understand and use the product
support content that enables consumers to repair and maintain the product
knowledge base content that enables staff to serve customers more effectively
technical content that enables engineers and designers to improve products and services

Ensuring that enabling content meets the requirements of this web of regulations can have one of two effects on content teams:

They can find themselves overwhelmed with juggling regulatory requirements and struggling to articulate the value of AI-ready content to management,

They can develop a content strategy that proves the essential role of contextualised, AI-ready content to decision-makers that ensures compliance and provides other business benefits such as the ability to deliver personalised content to multiple audiences.

What is AI-Ready Content. AI Ready Content refers to informational and business content that is compliant and designed for accurate interpretation by AI Technologies.

Understanding the Regulatory Landscape

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act aims to establish common requirements for AI systems, ensuring ethical use of AI technologies and protecting consumer interests. Understanding these regulations is essential for organizations that wish to navigate compliance while leveraging AI effectively. Similar regulations in the United Kingdom and Canada, along with regulations being developed in the USA, address similar concerns, though each country has a slightly different focus.

Implications for Content Production

The introduction of regulations such as the EU AI Act has a direct impact on content operations, particularly for and product content in particular. The EU AI Act specifically mentions documentation as evidence of compliance and the route to trustworthy AI.

As more companies deploy generative AI (GenAI) within content lifecycle management, or using an AI agent to deliver content to the public, the need for a content strategy that addresses these regulations holistically becomes critical to stay within compliance.

Mitigating Risks of Non-Compliance

Regulatory bodies have signalled their serious intent to enforce compliance to the regulations. Non-compliance with AI regulations can lead to significant penalties, including fines and operational restrictions. Organizations engaged in AI development or deployment are particularly at risk. By adopting AI-ready content practices, companies can create comprehensive documentation that meets regulatory requirements, minimizing the risk of penalties.

Who Will Be Affected by AI regulations

All companies aiming to operate within the EU or deploying AI technologies within the EU will be impacted by the EU AI Act. Combined with regulations coming out of the UK and Canada, all companies wanting to do business in these countries will be required to comply. In a global marketplace, this means virtually any country developing or deploying AI will fall under one, if not all, of these regulations. This includes a broad range of sectors—from healthcare and finance to consumer technology—and includes products and services not usually covered under the banner of “regulated industries”.

Notably, the EU AI Act has a wide-reaching definition of deployers. The regulation, while complex, will likely impact any company that uses an AI in the course of business with the public. Furthermore, the AI literacy clause of the EU AI Act goes into effect February 2025, requiring companies that deploy AI internally to provide employee training on the proper use of the AI.

Companies in regulated industries are already familiar with the importance of remaining compliant. Now, virtually all organisations must prioritise understanding these regulations to avoid risks associated with non-compliance.

Tying AI Regulations to Other Compliance Frameworks

The EU AI Act should not be considered in isolation. The Act works together with various regulations, including those related to consumer rights—such as the right to repair, and clarity of explanation—such as plain language and accessibility regulations. While regulations such as the Right to Repair Directive and the EU Medical Device Regulation are specific to particular industry segments, others such as the Plain Language policies and Accessibility laws apply across the board.

Interconnected Regulations: A Holistic Approach

Complying with multiple sets of regulations can play out in many ways. Here is one example:

Compliance with the Right to Repair Directive requires companies to maintain clear, usable documentation for the last ten years of products.

The requirement for clear documentation in the Right to Repair Directive connects to the need for content to comply with Plain Language, in order to exercise the consumer’s right to repair.

The clear documentation on product reparability and consumer rights must be accessible to all consumers, which then invokes the POUR principles of the Accessibility Act for content to be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, in a Robust infrastructure.

Using AI—using a chatbot, a search function, summarising assistant, or similar functions—to surface any of the content from the repositories where it is stored must then comply with the AI regulations.

Impact of inter-connected regulations on your content.

In addition, companies want both economical retrieval of the content that also reduces support calls; in other words, they want self-serve content with personalised results.

AI Readiness and Regulatory Compliance

Content AI readiness is intrinsically linked to regulatory compliance. Contextual, AI-ready content helps eliminate errors that arise when AI misinterprets or misrepresents content. This usually means adding some structure to content to provide the context machines requires for accurate interpretation. This structured approach provides the necessary context for AI systems, helping to eliminate errors and misinterpretations, commonly known as hallucinations.

In critical industries such as healthcare, life sciences, and finance, where consumer safety is paramount, AI-ready content acts as a safeguard against the types of risk laid out in the EU AI Act. In other industries, AI-ready content avoids regulatory penalties, lawsuits, and reputational damage from erroneous content.

Future-Proofing Content Production

The current desire is that AI (particularly generative AI) can take a jumble of content, make sense of it, and reliably offer it up to consumers through some sort of AI-enabled interface. While this is a lofty goal that may happen sometime in the future, the current reality is that AI performs substantially better when the content has properties that make it easier to understand context and intent.

A majority of companies with large bodies of content have amassed substantial content debt and need to remediate content—if not all content, then a considered subset of content—to make it AI ready. Companies that have traditionally invested in an “intelligent content” approach – in other words, content that is structurally rich and semantically categorised—will find that they have inadvertently created AI-ready content. Not only will the content be more easily discovered, content can be re-used and reconfigured for multiple products, and automatically adapted for accurate personalised delivery.

Content Operations as AI Enablement

Adopting best practices for content production has traditionally paid off in having an efficient operating model for overall effective content operations. Now, effective content operations brings a new benefit; taking a structured approach and implementing content best practices is helping companies comply as existing regulations evolve and new regulations are introduced.

The Role of AI in Content Creation

AI technologies are reshaping content operations, making it essential to focus on AI-ready content that enhances governance and accuracy. By implementing best practices for content production, organizations can better manage the complexities introduced by AI, ensuring that their content remains relevant, accurate, and compliant.

Embracing AI-Ready Content for Benefits beyond Compliance

The value of AI-ready content is not just an operational necessity but a strategic advantage. Not only does AI-ready content help companies meet business goals such as delivering personalised information to a range of audiences, AI-ready content can enable delivery of “the right content on the first query” to significantly reduce demands on call centres.

Regulations surrounding AI and other areas of compliance present both challenges and opportunities for organisations. By focusing on AI-ready content and adopting structured content best practices, companies can not only ensure compliance but also enhance the accuracy and reliability of their content strategies.

Contact us to explore how AI-ready content can help your organization navigate the complexities of regulatory compliance while future-proofing your strategy for efficient content operations. Embrace this pivotal moment and transform potential regulatory hurdles into catalysts for organisational improvement.

AI and Other Regulations to Watch

For your convenience, we have listed regulations for four countries, in five interconnected areas that apply to content. The links have been validated as of November 11, 2024.