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Freedom251 › Blog › Artificial Intelligence

Company “Sheepishly” Admits Its Employee Handbook Was Generated With ChatGPT—and Lacked an Anti-Harassment Policy

By Freedom251 Team · · 3 min read

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An unnamed company facing an escalating workplace-harassment claim reportedly acknowledged that ChatGPT had drafted its employee handbook—and that the handbook omitted an anti-harassment section. Futurism reported the account on May 14, 2024, citing Carly Holm, CEO of HR consultancy Humani, in an interview attributed to Forbes.

What the company reportedly admitted

According to Noor Al-Sibai’s May 14, 2024, report for Futurism, Holm described a client whose harassment claim was becoming more serious. The client said ChatGPT had written the company’s handbook, but the document did not include the key anti-harassment policy.

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The employer was not identified. The report does not reproduce the handbook, name the jurisdiction, describe the alleged conduct, or provide a later outcome for the company. The account is therefore an attributed anecdote, not an independently verified legal finding.

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Why a missing policy could draw scrutiny

Holm warned that investigators may examine an employer’s own policies when a workplace complaint arises. “If the workplace does not have appropriate policies in place like a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment, workplace violence, etc, the investigation will then look at the employer, and there will be consequences,” she told the magazine.

That warning should not be read as a single rule that applies identically in every country or state. Workplace-policy duties, investigation standards and potential consequences depend on the relevant law and facts. The narrower point is that a handbook can become evidence of how an employer communicated expectations and handled complaints.

What this story does not prove

  • It does not establish how often AI-written employee handbooks omit harassment language.
  • It does not show that ChatGPT was tested across handbooks or that every AI-generated policy has the same weakness.
  • It does not identify the employer, publish the document or report a final legal or financial result.
  • It does not establish that the omission alone caused a particular penalty.

A separate UK example involved a severance agreement

Futurism’s report also described a different incident. Daniel Grace, director of Iris, said a UK company used Microsoft Copilot to draft a severance agreement that allegedly left out essential information. Grace said the company’s lawyer rejected the document and that the company ultimately paid a higher settlement.

Grace characterized the episode as an example of AI tools being used to accelerate consequential work before they were ready: “Their lawyer essentially just threw it out the window and said this is useless,” he said. “It really tarnished their own negotiation and they ended up having to pay a higher settlement amount.”

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This second account concerns a severance agreement, not the unnamed company’s handbook. It is also an attributed anecdote rather than independently established legal or financial analysis.

What employers should do before using AI in a handbook

AI can help organize a first draft, but a handbook is a compliance document, not merely a piece of general writing. A responsible review should include:

  1. Map the applicable rules. Have employment counsel or a qualified HR-compliance professional check the document against the jurisdictions where employees work.
  2. Check core protections. Confirm that harassment, discrimination, workplace violence, retaliation, reporting channels and investigation procedures are addressed in language employees can understand.
  3. Verify operational details. Test names, contact methods, escalation routes, deadlines and definitions against the company’s actual practices.
  4. Review for omissions and contradictions. Compare the draft with existing policies, offer letters, collective agreements and required notices.
  5. Document approval and updates. Record who reviewed the handbook, when it took effect and how employees were notified of changes.

Those steps do not turn an AI draft into legal advice, and they cannot guarantee that a policy meets every local requirement. They do reduce the risk that fluent-looking text will conceal a consequential gap.

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The larger lesson

The reported handbook incident illustrates a basic limitation of generative AI: a document can sound complete while leaving out a section that matters most when a dispute begins. The evidence here supports caution about unreviewed HR documents—not a prevalence estimate or a blanket conclusion about ChatGPT or Copilot.

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Artificial IntelligenceChatGPTemployee handbooksHuman ResourcesMicrosoft Copilotworkplace harassment

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