This Policy was adopted March 20, 2024, and revised on November 11, 2025.

At The Open Sanctuary Project, transparency has been one of our core values since our founding in 2018. Since then, artificial intelligence or “AI” tools have dramatically evolved and increased in common usage, affecting most corners of the world. We have investigated and tested some of these tools to see whether they would help us in our missionThe stated goals and activities of an organization. An animal sanctuary’s mission is commonly focused on objectives such as animal rescue and public advocacy. or programming. As a digital organization primarily dedicated to the research and development of written information, we believe providing transparency on how these tools are implemented in our work is essential. The bottom line is that we currently do not use AI Tools to research or generate our written, audio, or video resources. Read on for more information.

We Do Not Use AI Tools In The Creation Of Our Written Resources

Because The Open Sanctuary Project is focused primarily on researching and publishing non-exploitative guidance in service of some of the most widely marginalized species on the planet, we often must conduct extensive, carefully cross-referenced research from information sources that often do not align with our values. We then synthesize this data and share practical and compassion-forward information that is rare to find elsewhere on the internet. 

At The Open Sanctuary Project, we recognize that compassionate caregivers are exposed to traumatic situations or information, sometimes on a daily basis, so we are also sensitive to the needs of our audience, and in particular, cautious to present information in a fashion that will not expose them unnecessarily to upsetting or traumatizing information or sources. For this reason, when we must draw from what we consider to be a non-compassionate source, we label the source as such, and we also provide content warnings to our audience in order to alert them to any potentially disturbing information we must share. We have found that using AI tools can subvert these goals, and in fact can inadvertently result in caregivers being exposed to disturbing information and/or imagery.

For example, while our staff was researching the information that is available on the internet with regards to the safe handling and restraint of turkeysUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated turkey breeds, not wild turkeys, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource., the following image was the search result. Please note that the image does contain information that might be upsetting to compassionate caregivers. 

While a top result for this search yields our own resource on “How To Safely Handle A TurkeyUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated turkey breeds, not wild turkeys, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource.,” it also includes an AI overview which propounds harmful information and has no place in compassionate caregiving.

Therefore, due to the risks associated with poorly-informed animal care and organizational governance, the paucity of compassionate sources on the internet, and the current propensity for LLM-style AI Tools (tools which are trained to analyze large data sets of language and then generate text) or chatbots such as ChatGPT and tools that utilize similar technology to confidently display false information as fact, The Open Sanctuary Project currently prohibits the use of AI Tools in the research or creation of any public-facing resource (whether created by staff, contractors, or volunteers), with the exception of grammar suggestion software aids during our editing process. Should this policy change, we will update this page and announce it on our primary social media channels as a measure of transparency.

We Do Not Use AI Tools In Organizing Or Analyzing Donor Data

We deeply respect the privacy of our donors. In addition to never sharing or selling our donor data to any other organization, we never organize or analyze donor data with AI tools in order to exercise an abundance of caution in protecting our donors’ private information.

We Limit The Use of AI Tool-Created Imagery

The Open Sanctuary Project prohibits using AI Tools to create photorealistic imagery in our resources. However, we may make use of graphic-generating AI Tools as part of Canva to create parts of non-photorealistic diagrams, charts, or graphics for use in resources to streamline the creation of certain resource elements. None of these AI-generated graphics will be uploaded to our website without review and editing to ensure they are as accurate and informative as possible for our audience.

Areas Where We May Employ AI Tools

While we currently do not use AI Tools to research or generate resources, there are some occasions where we might, in part, use AI Tools to help us quickly create first draft written content or graphics, such as:

• To help us draft social media post text (which will then be edited before publishing)
• To help brainstorm social media post ideas
• To generate non-photorealistic graphics or diagrams to be employed in resources
• To create text transcripts of videos or episodes of The Open Sanctuary Podcast
• To help us brainstorm and draft scripts for The Open Sanctuary Podcast based on closed datasets of existing resources written by OSP staff (which will then be edited before recording, and often added to and elaborated upon by staff during recording)

Policies Designed In Service Of Our Mission And Constituency

This AI Tool Usage Policy was created to help us serve our mission as effectively as possible. While our organization’s current restriction against using AI Tools may result in us taking additional time in the research and creation of our resources, we believe that this is worth the increased safety and reliability that comes from having human researchers with sanctuary experience creating each resource with as much precision and adherence to our values as possible. We will continue to monitor these tools and reevaluate their utility in our organization as they continue to evolve. For further reading on the subject of the usage of AI tools in research and animal advocacy, we recommend checking out Faunalytics’ article on the subject, found here!