AI may already be operating inside your dealership whether management approved it or not.

Salespeople, BDC reps, service employees and managers are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT and Claude to summarize customer lists, write follow-up, analyze data and complete everyday tasks.

The productivity benefit is obvious. The risk is that employees may be uploading customer information, dealership reports or other proprietary data into consumer AI platforms without understanding where that information goes or what policies apply.

Banning AI probably is not realistic. Pretending employees are not using it is even less realistic.

Should every dealership have a formal AI-use policy that clearly defines approved platforms, prohibited data and acceptable use cases?

And who should own that policy—IT, compliance, HR, the dealer principal or the technology vendors themselves?