Before anyone on your team pastes something into ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude or Gemini, they should know which light it is. Green goes in freely. Yellow gets stripped of names and numbers first. Red never goes in. That is the whole rule, and it fits on one page you can print and tape by the screen.
Free · One page · Print it
Get the Traffic Light Rule
The one-page PDF: the question to ask before you paste, the three lights with real examples, what stripping it down looks like, and which account can hold what.
- For teams: print one for every desk that uses AI, and walk through it in a 15-minute huddle.
- For policies: the three lights drop straight into an AI use policy as the data section.
The one question to ask before you paste
Would I be comfortable if this showed up on a billboard, in a competitor's inbox, or read aloud in a courtroom?
- Yes. It is green. Go.
- Only with the names taken out. It is yellow. Strip it down.
- No. It is red. Stop.
The three lights
GreenGo. Use it freely.
- Anything already public: your website, press releases, published standards and rules.
- Brainstorming: headlines, campaign angles, names, outlines.
- Rewriting rough notes that hold nothing sensitive, for tone, grammar or length.
- Summarizing public reports and articles.
- Learning: "Explain this like I'm new to it."
- Formatting: a messy list into a table, a template, an outline.
This is most of the work. It is where AI earns its keep.
YellowSlow down. Strip it first.
- Customer emails and complaints.
- Meeting notes and internal summaries.
- Incident and near-miss write-ups.
- SOPs and procedures that carry real part numbers or customer specs.
- HR topics in general terms: a review framework, never a review of a named person.
- Donor letters, sales follow-ups, anything written to one real person.
Give AI the shape of the task. Add the names, numbers and specifics yourself, after.
RedStop. Never paste this.
- Personal identifiers: Social Security, license and passport numbers, birth dates, home addresses.
- Money: bank, card and routing numbers, tax IDs, non-public financials.
- Secrets: passwords, API keys, login codes.
- Company crown jewels: customer lists, source code, unsigned contracts, trade secrets.
- Health: medical, injury and drug test details.
- Legal: attorney-client material, HR investigations, anything under NDA.
Not even on the business version, unless a signed agreement clears it.
What stripping it down looks like
Yellow is where most real work lives, and it is where the skill is. The technique is called data minimization: you give the AI the shape of the task without the sensitive specifics.
Red-light prompt
"Draft a response to customer John Smith at Acme Corp who is upset about invoice 12345 for $50,000."
Same job, stripped down
"Draft a professional, empathetic response to a customer frustrated about a billing error on a large invoice. Under 150 words."
Same output. None of the exposure. You fill in the name, the company and the dollar figure yourself, in your own email. Write "a 40-person machine shop in Bay County," never "the Johnson Company on Maple Street."
Which account can hold what?
- Free or personal account: green only.
- Company business or enterprise account: green, plus yellow once it is stripped.
- Red: no account, ever, without a signed agreement.
Company data only goes into a company-provisioned account. Not the free tier, and not even to test.
Before you use what it gives you
- Ask for the source. Open it. Find the sentence.
- Check it is current and right for your state and your industry.
- Check it matches your actual job, machine or customer.
- A named person signs off before it goes out the door.
AI drafts. People decide. That check is the job.
Lock down your account
- Turn off training on your data.
- Review what memory has stored.
- Delete old chats you are done with.
- Use the official app and site only. No "add AI" browser extensions.
- Turn on two-factor sign-in.
Where each of those settings lives in ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and Gemini, and why the rule works the way it does, is in Is ChatGPT Safe to Use at Work?
Common questions
Is it safe to paste customer emails into ChatGPT?
Only after you strip them down. A customer email is yellow: take out the name, the company, the account or invoice number and any dollar figure, ask for the reply you need, then put the specifics back in yourself. On a free or personal account, keep it to green material only.
Does a paid business account make everything safe?
No. A company business or enterprise account is the right place for yellow work once it is stripped down, because those tiers keep your data out of training by default. Red material still stays out, on any account, unless your organization has cleared it under a signed agreement with the vendor.
Does the rule work for Copilot, Claude and Gemini too?
Yes. The rule is about what you type, not which tool you type it into. The same three lights apply to every chatbot and every AI feature built into the software you already use.
Can I print this and share it with my team?
Yes. The PDF is free to print, post and hand out. Keep the Understanding Your AI line at the bottom so people know where it came from.
Want your whole team trained on this?
Tim teaches the Traffic Light Rule on-site to teams across Michigan's Great Lakes Bay Region, with prompts written for each person's real job. Start with a 20-minute call or the free readiness check.
