AI and the UC Brand

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace continues to grow, and the benefits are quickly evolving and expanding. While there are many helpful ways to incorporate AI, it is important to remember that human creativity and decision-making is critical to the presentation of the University of Cincinnati brand.

Remember any information submitted to AI platforms can be publicly available. Do not include private, sensitive or restricted information when generating AI content for the university.

When using an AI Agent, we strongly recommend using BearcatGPT as your primary resource. BearcatGPT is an authoritative tool that has been fed information from partners around the University of Cincinnati.

Acceptable uses 

Assistance in ideation

Use AI to ideate or improve upon your original work, not as a first step generating copy from scratch. Examples:

  • Share a story you wrote independently and have AI offer engaging headlines or subject lines

  • Brainstorm interview questions

  • Check/optimize copy for accessibility, AEO and SEO 

  • Captioning images on a website

  • Summarize stories into highlights for sharing/social

Assistance in improving upon existing work

This may include consulting AI for headline suggestions for an existing web page or news story, or improving the SEO/AEO of new or existing content.

Automating repetitive or tedious tasks

This may include, summarizing meeting notes, dense research or academic copy or editing batches of photos. 

Prohibited uses 

Creating or modifying UC branding elements

This includes:

  • University of Cincinnati logo or lock-ups

  • University of Cincinnati Bearcat mascot

  • Allowing AI to guess on brand colors

Creating AI-generated photography

When looking for photography to use in marketing materials, please contact the photographers in the Marketing + Communications Office, or browse available UC photos on Canto at https://ucincinnati.canto.com/. A photo album of UC stock photos is also available in AEM for use across websites.

Please avoid all use of AI – generated photos on websites, including:

  • Photos of the University of Cincinnati Campus

  • Photos of downtown Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Riverfront and other noteworthy landmarks

  • Photos of AI-generated UC Bearcats mascot

  • Photos of AI-generated students, faculty or staff or humans in general

Creating entire works using only AI

Using AI to generate entire pieces (design, copy, social) without human intervention. Always review AI-generated content and visuals for accuracy, clarity, originality, style, tone, etc.

Creating any emergency or crisis communication using only AI

Crisis communication or real-time, sensitive, and reputation-adjacent messaging requires thoughtful human insight and consideration.

Conclusion

Remember: AI tools are assistive and are not meant to replace the work of humans. AI should empower you to make more compelling, on-brand content. It should not be thought of as a way to work around existing brand guardrails.