How Wellsprings Group uses AI

Why we're telling you this

AI writing and image tools are now part of how a lot of organisations, including small parishes like ours, get things written and designed. We'd rather be open about how we use them than let you wonder. In short: we sometimes use AI to help draft wording. We never let it publish anything unread, and we never use AI-generated images in our own material.

What we do use AI for

Occasionally, someone preparing a notice, poster line, or first draft of a letter will use an AI tool to help get the wording started - much as you might ask a friend to suggest a sentence. It can save time on routine, everyday text.

What always happens next

A named person reads and edits every word before anything is published. Nothing goes out - on paper, on the website, or on screen - that hasn't been checked by someone here. If a time, date, name, phone number or fact of any kind came from an AI draft, we check it against the original source before it's used. Whoever publishes something is responsible for it, in the same way they always have been.

What we don't do

• We never publish an AI-generated image of our own. Every photograph you see from us was taken by someone here, and every illustration was drawn by someone here. If we don't have a real image, we use none at all. (Advertisements in Voice are the one thing we don't create ourselves - see below.)

• We never put pastoral conversations, safeguarding matters, health information, or anything told to us in confidence into an AI tool - regardless of what any tool claims about privacy. That information stays with the people it was entrusted to.

• We never let an AI tool have the final word on anything involving safeguarding or a named individual. That is always written and checked by a person directly.

Advertisements in The Voice magazine

The Voice carries advertisements from local businesses and other third parties. We do not write or design these; advertisers supply them. Some of them may include images or text that were created with AI tools.

The rules above apply to everything we write, draw and photograph ourselves. They do not extend to advertisers' material, and we cannot always tell whether an advertisement was made with AI. An advertisement appearing in The Voice is not an endorsement of the advertiser, their products or their claims by the Wellsprings Group or its churches.

We read every advertisement before it is printed, and we will not print anything we consider misleading, offensive or unsuitable for a church publication, whether or not AI was used to make it. If you have a concern about an advertisement, please contact The Voice editor at [email protected].