A Simple Illustration

 

Here's a simple illustration. Imagine a lemonade stand that sells super-sweet lemonade. It's warm outside. The sun is bright. Its brightness matches the ice-cold lemonade that temptingly frosts the glasses they are served in. The lemonade is cold enough to quench thirst but not so cold that all you taste is "cold." It's perfect. As everybody is buying, everybody’s sugar spikes, but they do not really think of it. The reputation of the business is neither here nor there. It’s good lemonade. Whatever!

 

Now imagine a lemonade stand with a sign that says “Super-Sweet Lemonade.” It's just as hot out and the golden lemonade is just as sweet. Lemonade Stand 2 warns that there is a high amount of sugar in the recipe and encourages buyers to make their purchases a one-off treat. This honesty creates a memorable brand image of accountability and an air of honesty that develops a conversation and brand loyalty. The people still want lemonade. The people still want their lemonade super-sweet, but somebody in the corporate world considered their health and made a helpful suggestion: buy this and you can forego other sweet drinks for the rest of the day.

 

For Lemonade Stand 1, a person will buy their lemonade again if he or she comes across it. For Lemonade Stand 2, a person seeks it out, becomes a loyal customer, and recommends it, for he or she can tell the piece about Lemonade Stand 2's honesty and accountability.

 

Honesty in business surprises, especially these days. It has the potential to make great business in a cancel-culture world.

 

AI’s Room for Honesty

There is a great deal of room for honesty to come in when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Not that AI is a particularly dishonest sphere but as with every new sphere, newness requires a refining process of developing associated policies and rules over time. New spheres tend to roll out with more blind spots that have not yet been discovered. Human flaw is inherent and unchecked.

 

There are many opportunities to display honesty, even places where honesty will be needed with AI as a relatively new sphere of human activity. If you think about it, there are multiple areas where lying, cheating, stealing, misrepresentation, and insensitivity to humans and nature can creep in within the world of artificial intelligence. Here are a couple of scenarios that you can imagine.

 

Scenario 1

 

Yco – “Dear Xco Representative, I am writing because the image that appears at the top of your homepage looks just like an image my company Yco made that is available on Pinterest. We can see you got the template from Pinterest. We’ll need you to take it down.”

 

Xco – “Dear Yco, we made this image using AI. We must have used the same AI software or the same algorithm as each other [wink! wink!]. I am not prepared to take it down because we created it fair and square.”

 

Xco is lying.

 

In the scenario above, the two companies having the same image is not a good thing. With AI, we have the ability to create the same image or the same piece of writing as others. We have the ability to take an image or words from the Internet without paying for them and apply an AI filter to them, and this can render multiple people’s generative AI-derived work the same. Some people will even skip the AI and claim that they used AI all the same. With AI, we can lie and blame instances of copying or duplication on the AI.

 

Scenario 2

 

Jane comes up with a new thought. In ten days, her thought, which she posted on her blog, is common knowledge. She gets no credit for it. AI trainers have accessed her blog for free, and they have re-worded it all so as to avoid being caught copying. What at first Jane knew was novel thought is now as if it were among the common thoughts of humankind.

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In the creation of informational and text-generating AI platforms, a company has the ability to take the content from other people’s writing on the Internet or from other people’s books and train AI with it. Let's face it. Sometimes they are not even training AI with it. They are just rewriting it and calling it AI. Someone else is doing the work and an AI company may just be rehashing it for pay, replacing the writer in a sense.

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Have a Solution

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The next leader of the AI tech giants is going to have shockingly human-friendly policy. To ensure that it's you, develop a solution to an area of sensitivity that comes with the problems of the new world of AI. Your solution could be a simple statement or disclaimer. Your solution could be a clever way around an issue presented by AI.

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Initiative

Initiative is a principal factor with the honesty and accountability approach to boosting your company. Showing initiative by being ahead of the curve is key for this area of opportunity.

 

Remember when calorie information was first made mandatory on food packaging? Imagine a company that started the policy even before they were made to do it. Couldn't you see them being trusted for the integrity they have and the quality of their food business? Couldn't you see such a company using the achievement as a part of their marketing language long past the implementation? 

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Don’t be like the last of the packaged food makers to report their calorie information on their packaging. There are no extra points for those who follow in tow. Instead, be the first to reflect a new class of honesty in your field and you will go down in history for this.

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Your Next Strategy​

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Imagine a news heading coming out, "Company X came out with a policy that..." and the policy goes on to describe a creative or bold solution that's people friendly. What would your company do to help display honesty in a case like Scenario 1? Will your company create penalties for dishonesty? Will you adopt a policy or a system where input images must be cited? Will you make it noticeably clear that other people might be using the same output image? Will you limit inputs of the same image to just one? Will you limit outputs of the same image to just one, creating an army of creative options to avoid duplication? Do you have the kind of "bandwidth" and creativity to match that level of scale, making a unique output for each transaction? What would your solution be?

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For Scenario 2, what would your solution be? How would you try to stand out. Would you be that company that can say, “We create information from original sources. We start from scratch.” Are you going to cite the places where you borrow content from, have your employees who train your AI cite where they borrow from? Though extra work is involved, such steps are opportunities. Whatever it is, have a solution and make people aware of it.​

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The bottom line is you want to make yourself a name for being a company with all the “tech” in check, plus integrity in check. There are ample opportunities to come in and gain recognition for forward-thinking policies that are unique to problems created by AI. Make a change and make it known.

 

Key Tips​

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• Keep it a secret. Not everybody in your company has to know about what you are working on until you are ready to implement it. Good ideas that can catapult your company can leak and catapult your competitor. Keep the idea under wraps until you are ready to launch it in a way that it will be recognized as your own, telling as few players as you can until then. Then, when you are ready to, make it widely known.

• Don't try too much. You don't have to attempt to address each and every scenario that is wrong in the world of AI. Poorly managed time and burnout are real implications of trying too much at once. Picking one solution that will stand out in the minds of the public is as good as picking twenty. Choose one, implement it and make it known.

• Be an advocate when fresh out of ideas. If you've drawn a blank and cannot think of new policies you want to maintain, consider advocating for current policies on the table in your industry that others have come up with. Being a policy advocate sometimes benefits from the same points system. If you can't think of a policy of your own, be a part of making someone else's come into existence, and make this known.

• Make it known. Doing good in your personal life and boasting about it is a poor choice, but in business, you are allowed to tout your own good deeds. It is a strategy. When you find that solution that oozes honesty and radiates your accountability, tell the world about it in articles, social media, on packaging, and in ads. Do not miss this important step.

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Final Notes

 

Lead by landing an even more likeable new look with lasting impressions. Be kind by some policy you implement and put your care for clients and community out there.

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You may have become a tech giant in your own right. You may have climbed and conquered the mountains of screws, clouds, coding, chips, and motherboards. Now, your company has a chance to become greater by tapping into things of humanity—things such as the honesty and accountability that have the power to drive the enterprise of tech things.

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Published February 27, 2026. Copyright © WTL International. This information cannot be copied, and this script cannot be shared with parties who have not purchased access to the script.