Clay Expands Its AI Writing Policy Across the Company

Summary

Clay introduced an AI writing policy after observing that some AI-assisted documents and presentations had become unnecessarily long, unclear, and filled with common AI writing patterns. Sophie Alpert first developed the policy for engineering, then expanded it across the company after employees in other teams requested it; it also applies to written materials prepared by prospective hires. The policy does not ban AI for writing. Employees may use AI for brainstorming, drafting, and proofreading, but authors must personally stand behind every idea and sentence and ensure that the final document reflects their intended structure, emphasis, and wording. Clay argues that writing is also a form of thinking, so outsourcing a document’s creation can reduce the author’s understanding of the subject and weaken artifacts such as specifications, status updates, and retrospectives as evidence of thought. The policy also asks writers to spend more time authoring than readers need to spend consuming, because inefficient documents impose a multiplied cost on teams. It warns that AI makes it easy to produce longer text without adding meaning and that rewriting is not lossless because changes in wording can change meaning. AI-generated passages that do not meet these standards may still be quoted when they are clearly identified as AI output. The policy became more widely known after Clay co-founder Varun shared it on LinkedIn, and Alpert says she hopes AI tools improve at helping people write clearly.