Inevitably, this made the headlines last month, being the first disclosed use by a judge within the UK doing so.

In a speech to a Law Society of England & Wales Conference, Lord Justice Birss spoke of the “real potential” new AI technology had, going on to to say he had used it himself. He said: “I asked ChatGPT can you give me a summary of this area of law, and it gave me a paragraph. I know what the answer is because I was about to write a paragraph that said that. But it did it for me and I put it in my judgment.”

The judge was quick to caveat that he alone remained responsible for the decision, saying “I’m taking full personal responsibility for what I put in my judgment, I am not trying to give the responsibility to somebody else. All it did was a task which I was about to do and which I knew the answer and could recognise an answer as being acceptable.”

Alan Delaney is a Partner in Morton Fraser's Employment Law Team.

Judges aside, it seems both clear and inevitable that many workers are turning increasingly to the use of AI within their workplaces as productivity tools.

It has the potential to be a transformative force for many, offering a range of benefits from retrieving and summarising information quickly, to helping with content generation.

This can be seen from Deloitte’s 2023 Digital Consumer Trends report which reported in July that one in ten UK adults (around four million people) had used generative AI for work purposes, with that number surely set to grow fast.

Perhaps of more concern were the findings that only 23 per cent of those surveyed thought their employer would approve and that 19 per cent felt AI would always produce factually accurate results.

However, perhaps this is not so surprising in light of a Randstad UK survey, which last month revealed that only 7 per cent of employees received AI training in the last year. This despite demand for such training being high from those surveyed.

These findings should serve as a wake-up call to employers.

Since it appears inevitable that more and more workers are turning to AI for work purposes, the time would seem right for many employers, if they have not done so already, to look carefully at both staff training and developing a clear policy on the use of AI within the workplace.

Such a policy should outline the potential benefits while addressing key risks.

While the approach will depend on the organisation, key topics to consider include providing guidance on responsible use and addressing data privacy, security and confidentiality issues, as well as mitigating against the risks of bias and error.

On this last aspect, arguably many workers would be well advised to heed the caution of Lord Justice Birrs, on accountability remaining theirs alone.

Alan Delaney is a Partner in Morton Fraser's Employment Law Team.

Employers need clear policies on the use of AI within the workplace - Alan Delaney