Prompt of the Week: The AI Line in the Sand

Hi Reader,

Everyone is racing to announce what their AI can do.

Chick-fil-A did the opposite this week. It publicly drew a line around the work it plans to keep human.

It's a bold move, but also a smart one.

Because here is what is happening in every comms department right now. Employees are guessing what is allowed. Customers are guessing what is automated. Reporters are guessing what you will say when they ask.

Nobody has written down their line, so everyone draws their own.

Think of it like a kitchen with no allergy policy. It works fine until the one day it doesn't. Then everyone wants to know who decided what, and when.

This week's prompt helps you write the line before someone else asks you where it is.

👇🏽 Here's the prompt:

🎯 Expert Mode: The "AI Line in the Sand"

Scenario: Your organization uses AI, but nobody has said out loud where it stops. You need a clear, defensible statement of where you will and will not use AI, plus the hard questions a skeptical journalist or employee would ask about it.

Instructions:

1️⃣ Open a fresh chat in Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.

2️⃣ Jot down three things in plain language: how your team uses AI today, what work you believe should stay human, and who needs to hear your position (customers, employees, press, regulators). Rough notes are fine.

3️⃣ Paste your notes under the prompt below.

Act as a senior communications strategist advising a brand that wants to publicly define where it will and will not use AI. Using my notes below, do four things.

First, draft a 150-word "AI line in the sand" statement in plain language with no jargon and no hedging.

Second, write a shorter internal version for employees that explains what changes for them.

Third, list the five toughest questions a skeptical journalist would ask about this position, and give me a strong answer for each. Fourth, flag any claim in my statement that I could not defend if someone checked it. Do not make promises I have not told you I can keep.

4️⃣ Read the "claims I cannot defend" list first. Cut or soften every line on it. A line you cannot hold is worse than no line at all.

5️⃣ Send the revised statement and the five journalist questions to your leadership team before you publish anything. Ask one question: "Can we live with this in a year?"

Suggested Tool: Claude (strongest at spotting claims you cannot back up)

Why You'll Love It

It turns a vague AI policy debate into one page your leadership can actually react to.
It surfaces the hard questions before a reporter or an employee asks them in public.
It protects you from over-promising, which is how most AI statements end up in the news for the wrong reasons.

The brands that earn trust on AI will not be the ones with the most features. They will be the ones that said clearly what they would not do, and then kept their word.

Talk soon,

Chris

⚡ The Cowork Version

Same line in the sand, except Claude reads your actual policies and past statements, finds where your words and practice already disagree, and drops a finished kit into your folder.

Setup (one time):

Put your current AI policy, employee handbook section, and any public AI statements into one folder.
Add a short notes file covering what work you believe should stay human and who needs to hear your position.
Tell Claude where to save the output (a new "AI Line in the Sand" subfolder works well).

Run this Cowork command:

Build my AI Line in the Sand kit from the files in this folder.

1️⃣ Read every document in the folder and list each place we describe how we use AI, with the file name and the exact wording.

2️⃣ Compare those descriptions against my notes file and flag every mismatch between what we say and what we actually do.

3️⃣ Draft a 150-word public "AI line in the sand" statement in plain language, and a shorter internal version for employees.

4️⃣ Write the five toughest questions a skeptical journalist would ask about this position, with a strong, honest answer for each.

5️⃣ Review every claim in the statement and mark any I could not defend if someone checked it.

6️⃣ Save everything as separate files in a new subfolder and write a one-page summary that tells me what to fix first.

What you'll get:

A mismatch report showing where our words and our practice disagree
A public statement and an internal version, ready for leadership review
A journalist Q&A with five hard questions and honest answers
A "claims we cannot defend" list, marked up
A one-page summary ranking what to fix first

Want it on autopilot? Ask Claude to turn this into a skill, or schedule it quarterly so your line gets re-checked every time your tools change.

Here are a few articles from the past week to help keep you up to speed:

Chick-fil-A draws an AI line in the sand. Have you drawn yours?PR Daily October 21, 2026
While many brands rush to show off new AI capabilities, Chick-fil-A publicly committed to keeping certain work human. For comms pros, a clear "where we won't use AI" position is becoming a brand choice, not just a policy footnote.
AI Is Forcing PR To Embrace Thought Partnership
PRNEWS October 20, 2026
The piece argues AI has undermined the old approach to executive thought leadership. If a model can write the generic byline, your edge is the real point of view only your leader can offer.
We Stopped Writing "Announced" in Our Releases. AI Visibility Went Up. Here Are the 9 Other PR Habits We Had to Break.PR@ctical (Sarah Evans) October 19, 2026
After eight months of writing press releases for AI discovery, Sarah Evans shares what her team changed, backed by third-party data. These are release edits you can test on your next announcement.
How Do People Perceive AI Fact-Checking Messages?
Institute for Public Relations October 20, 2026
A study looks at whether misinformation corrections land differently from a human expert or an AI system, and whether they use statistics or narrative. Who delivers the correction can matter as much as what it says.
Automation vs. authenticity: Where PR draws the line
PRWeek October 15, 2026 PR leaders at the PRWeek conference in Chicago discussed using AI for efficiency while protecting trust, strategy, and authentic voice. It is a useful companion to this week's prompt.

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