When to say no to a customer’s AI request
Clients are starting to ask suppliers to use AI, or to prove they do not. Both requests can be unreasonable, and declining well is a skill worth having.
Two requests are now reaching Swiss suppliers. Use AI so our work is cheaper. And guarantee you do not use it at all. Both are sometimes reasonable, and both are sometimes a request to take on a risk that belongs to the person asking.
« Use AI and charge us less »
Fair in principle. If a task genuinely takes you a third of the time it did, a long-standing customer will expect to see some of that, and pretending otherwise damages a relationship you want.
Where it becomes unreasonable is when the saving is assumed rather than observed. A customer who has read that AI makes everything three times faster may expect a discount on work where it saves nothing, and agreeing to that sets a price you cannot sustain.
The answer is specific rather than defensive: on this part of the work it saves time and here is the revised figure; on that part it does not, and here is why. The January return categories are exactly the vocabulary for that conversation.
« Guarantee no AI was used »
Usually an unreasonable request, and usually made without realising it. Taken literally it excludes your spell checker, your email filter and your accounting software.
Decline the literal version and offer what they actually want, which is the 26 September answer: a named person is responsible for the accuracy of what you deliver, and the work is reviewed by them before it goes out.
If they insist on the literal guarantee, they are asking you to warrant something you cannot verify. That is a commercial decision, and it should be priced as one rather than agreed to in order to keep the meeting pleasant.
The third request, which is reasonable
« Tell us which of our data touches AI systems and where it is processed. » Answer this one fully and without hedging. It is a legitimate question, you should know the answer, and a supplier who cannot answer it is telling the customer something.
The principle
Say yes to transparency, no to unverifiable guarantees, and negotiate on price rather than on assumptions. All three are easier when you have the one-page record and can answer from a document rather than from memory.