City of Seattle Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy

• Authority: Seattle, WA
• Parent authority: Local governments
• Jurisdiction: United States
• Collections: U.S. state and local documents
• Most recent activity: Enacted
• Most recent activity date: 2023-10-23

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
• Unequal performance across groups
• Compromise of privacy
• False or misleading information
• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Lack of capability or robustness
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• AI system security vulnerabilities
• Loss of human agency and autonomy
• Environmental harm

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has good coverage of approximately 8-10 subdomains, with strong focus on discrimination and bias (1.1, 1.3), privacy compromise (2.1), false information (3.1), security vulnerabilities (2.2), overreliance (5.1), lack of transparency (7.4), and lack of robustness (7.3). Coverage is concentrated in fairness, privacy, misinformation prevention, and AI system reliability domains.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• Public Administration (excl. National Security)

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the sector are described.

• Health Care & Social Assistance

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This is an internal municipal government policy that governs AI use within the City of Seattle's own operations. The primary sector governed is Public Administration (excluding National Security), as the policy applies to all City departments, employees, vendors, and contractors operating on behalf of the City government. The policy does not regulate external private sector entities or other industries.

Legislative Status

Other

Legislative Status Summary

This is an internal municipal government policy document that establishes binding requirements for City of Seattle departments and employees regarding generative AI use. While it has mandatory language and enforcement mechanisms for internal compliance, it is not a statute or regulation with external legal force.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The policy document identifies DPAC division as responsible for maintaining the policy, with ownership by the Director of DPAC and Chief Privacy Officer. The document is issued by the City of Seattle government.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Deployer, AI_User
• Summary: The policy explicitly states its scope covers all City departments and extends to vendors, contractors, and volunteers operating on behalf of the City. City employees are identified as users of generative AI tools who must comply with the policy requirements.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The CTO is explicitly designated as responsible for compliance enforcement. Seattle IT has approval authority over generative AI acquisitions and can revoke authorizations. Division directors and department leaders have authority to impose disciplinary actions.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: Seattle IT conducts risk and impact reviews of generative AI technology requests. DPAC maintains the policy and creates risk criteria. Departments are required to document HITL reviews and maintain records, with RSJI Change Teams involved in equity evaluations.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Collect and Process Data
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document primarily focuses on the acquisition, deployment, and operational use stages of generative AI systems. It establishes requirements for technology acquisition approval, mandates human review of AI outputs during operation, and requires ongoing monitoring through documentation and records retention. The policy does not substantially address data collection, model building, or pre-deployment verification stages.

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Models
• AI Systems
• Generative AI

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly defines and focuses on 'generative artificial intelligence' as its primary scope, describing it as systems using large language models capable of generating new content including text, images, video, and audio. It also references AI technologies generally through its principles section but applies policy statements only to generative AI systems. No mention of frontier AI, general purpose AI, foundation models, compute thresholds, or open-weight models.