Publish responsibly with AI: a proposed review workflow

Define what responsible publishing means for your project

Our proposed definition of responsible AI publishing is practical: state the assignment, identify the evidence behind factual statements, and name the person who decides whether the finished material can be released. Use this as an editorial convention for articles, guides, and website copy. It is not a promise that a project will contain no mistakes. Decide what you want the review to cover before asking an agent to produce a draft.

Google's guidance says generative AI can assist with researching a topic and structuring original content. It also calls for manual fact-checking and review of AI-generated content before publication. Google's guidance on generative AI content.

The official Max AI registration page describes Max AI as an operating system for AI agents. Max AI registration. For the workflow proposed here, make your editorial decision from the project brief, source material, and reviewed draft. Do not treat that product description as evidence for additional capabilities or assurances.

The following sections set out our proposed workflow. Adapt the roles and document names to your own team. For a solo project, you may take both the author and reviewer roles; we recommend recording the drafting decision and the release decision separately. Choose one modest publishing assignment for your first use of the checklist.

Write a brief that a reviewer can assess

Start with a question rather than an instruction to produce a particular amount of copy. In our proposed brief, write the intended reader, the question they want answered, and the material you intend to provide. For a fictional workshop website, the question might be: “What should a visitor prepare before attending a beginner session?” The planned output could be a preparation checklist and a sample reminder message.

Then specify the boundaries. In this example, our proposed brief would exclude session dates, prices, equipment availability, and accessibility arrangements until the workshop owner supplies those details. Give the author permission to leave a question open. Ask for a draft with placeholders where necessary, and prohibit turning a placeholder into a factual assertion merely to finish the page.

Google's helpful-content guidance asks creators to assess originality, completeness, additional value, and whether headings describe the content without exaggeration. It also suggests seeking an honest assessment from trusted people unaffiliated with the site. Google's content self-assessment guidance.

Our proposed application is to write acceptance criteria in ordinary language. For the workshop page, request a clear distinction between required items and optional suggestions, one example reminder, and a list of unresolved questions. Have the reviewer judge those elements against the brief. Do not substitute a general instruction such as “make it excellent” for a concrete description of the intended result.

Create an evidence note for each assertion

Our proposed evidence note has four entries: the draft sentence, its source, the supporting passage, and the review decision. Apply it to statements about an organization, an event, a product, or a documented procedure. Keep proposed wording and editorial suggestions in a separate category. For those suggestions, ask whether they suit the assignment rather than assigning them an invented source.

Google explains that generative models predict likely word sequences from training data and that their outputs can contain inaccuracies. Google's explanation of generative output.

In our convention, inspect the entire assertion. Suppose the fictional draft says, “All materials are supplied, so participants can arrive empty-handed.” Ask the workshop owner to confirm the materials statement and the attendance instruction independently. If the supplied document names only paper and pencils, mark the broader wording as unresolved. Offer a narrower draft for approval, or leave an explicit question for the owner.

We also propose a vocabulary rule: distinguish “the workshop provides” from “we suggest bringing.” The first is an assertion about the fictional service and requires confirmation within the example. The second is an editorial recommendation, which should remain visibly optional. Avoid converting a suggested preparation step into a claim about attendance, satisfaction, or any other outcome without separate supporting evidence.

For the review record, use a decision such as “supported,” “revise,” or “remove.” Explain revisions at sentence level. An instruction to “check the facts” is not our proposed completion record; a note identifying the reviewed sentence and its basis is. When an assertion contains several details, split the review into smaller entries if that makes the decision easier to inspect.

Treat each language edition as its own assignment

Google recommends separate URLs for language versions and links that let users choose another language version. Its multilingual guidance says it determines a page's language from visible content and recommends a single language for the content and navigation on each page. Google's multilingual website guidance.

Our editorial proposal goes beyond assigning a translated draft to the same release record. Give each language edition its own reader brief, examples, review notes, and approval decision. Choose phrasing for that audience while checking the underlying assertions against their sources. Do not require an identical paragraph order when a different structure better fits the assignment you have chosen.

For the fictional workshop, propose a checklist in one edition and a short question-and-answer format in another. Keep the distinction between required items and optional suggestions explicit in both. Ask each reviewer to identify ambiguous instructions, unexplained terms, and any statement that exceeds the supplied material. Treat a change to a factual detail as a new review question, even when the rest of the paragraph has already been accepted.

Add the page address, language-switch label, and call to action to each edition's project sheet. Our proposed review should include reading those elements alongside the article. Choose a clear label for the destination and inspect the intended link. If the project contains only one approved language edition, record that scope rather than implying that another edition has also passed review.

Review the entire publishing package

Google's manual-review guidance extends to title elements, meta descriptions, structured data, and image alternative text. Google's review guidance for page metadata.

Our proposed checklist therefore includes a separate pass over the publishing package. Compare the headline with the actual scope. If the page offers a suggested preparation routine, choose a headline that presents it as a suggestion. Reject a proposed description that adds an undocumented service feature, an unsupported number, or a guaranteed result. Apply the same decision to image captions and any summary prepared for another part of the website.

For visuals, our convention is to state what the diagram represents. Label an invented sequence as a proposed workflow and a fictional message as an example. Ask the reviewer to check any factual text inside the visual against the evidence notes. Do not consider a caption outside the review simply because the main article has already been approved.

Finally, read the page as a complete assignment. In the workshop example, check whether the preparation list, reminder, title, and destination label belong to the same brief. Return any mismatch with a specific request: “Confirm whether this item is required” or “Rewrite this caption as a proposal.” Keep those requests attached to the relevant element rather than adding a vague instruction to improve the whole package.

Record the release decision and the next review trigger

Our proposed release record allows three decisions: approve, return for revision, or hold. Approval means the designated reviewer has accepted the assignment's scope and reviewed the factual assertions retained in the package. Revision means the record identifies changes to make. Hold means the project lacks the material needed to complete the chosen scope. These are our organizational labels, not product ratings or guarantees.

Write a short reason next to the decision. For the fictional workshop page, “hold until the owner confirms required equipment” is a suitable example. Specify a proposed trigger for reopening the review, such as a change to the underlying equipment list. Revisit the connected sentences and page elements when that trigger occurs. Choose the trigger from the project's needs rather than presenting a universal review interval.

To try this workflow, prepare one brief and a small set of source materials, then use “Create account” to begin your own project. Ask the agent for a draft, unresolved questions, and clearly marked editorial suggestions. Under our proposed convention, the deliverable is the reviewed publishing package together with a release decision. Treat generation as one stage within that assignment.