Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) Program
AI and the City of Seattle
The City of Seattle is dedicated to leveraging technology in a way that aligns with its core principles, policies, commitments, and all applicable laws and regulations. To ensure responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), the City has established guiding principles and policies, along with actionable guidelines and programs to assist City employees in using AI ethically and effectively.
Under United States law, AI is defined as “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments” (15 USC 9401(3)). Broader definitions also encompass related concepts such as algorithms and automated decision-making systems.
While AI offers new possibilities for addressing critical challenges, enhancing City services, and improving responsiveness, its misuse could amplify issues like misinformation, bias, privacy violations, and societal harms such as fraud and discrimination. To fully harness the potential of AI, it is essential to manage these significant risks through careful oversight and responsible practices.
The City's Policy on AI
In 2025, Seattle IT leaders developed the 2025-2026 AI Plan. Through the plan comes the development of the updated AI Policy. The City partnered with community, academia, and experts to develop the updated AI policy, which sets the foundation for City staff using AI by incorporating frameworks and best practices prioritizing innovation and responsible use. The updated policy applies to general AI solutions used by the City of Seattle and includes the City’s Generative AI Policy. This approach will continue to ensure Seattle’s leadership in responsible artificial intelligence implementation to better serve residents and businesses.
The City of Seattle released its Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) policy [PDF] in October 2023.
Both policies and principles were developed with input from regional AI experts, university researchers, and members of the Community Technology Advisory Board (CTAB). The updated policy governs the use of AI based on the City’s principles. This approach allows for flexibility as City employees use new technology all the while ensuring adherence to best practices and government specific regulatory frameworks and requirements.
As with the GAI policy, the updated AI Policy requires that City employees acquire the technology through the City’s approved procurement channels, which include AI-specific considerations to ensure the solution is consistent with the City’s standards.
City Employee AI Training Plan
Alongside the new policy, the City has launched a new employee training and upskilling initiative and a responsible use toolkit. The training will have three phases:
1) Introductory Citywide training
2) Deep dive workshops on data science and integration with existing work
3) Partnerships with universities and technology companies to create a developer-level curriculum for advanced projects
Seattle IT leaders and experts have developed the Responsible AI Toolkit for City employees. This serves as a one-stop shop for questions, training resources, current AI pilots, intake resources, and much more.
The City of Seattle is committed to a forward-thinking and collaborative approach to integrating Artificial Intelligence into operations, focused on empowering employees through training and upskilling programs.
Next Steps
As part of the training initiative, Seattle IT will host a Community of Practice for City employees with an interest in AI technologies to exchange information, best practices, use cases, and other experiences.
The program will also help develop specific evaluation and purchasing guidelines and frameworks for assessing AI technologies that are proposed for use in conducting City business.
Artificial Intelligence Principles
The City of Seattle has adopted the following principles regarding AI systems in general. These principles describe general codes of conduct that represent the City’s values and are aligned with our responsibilities to the residents we serve. These principles serve to guide City employees in their use of both generative and traditional AI technology.
Innovation and Sustainability
The City values public service innovation to meet our residents’ needs. We commit to responsibly explore and evaluate AI technologies, which will improve our services and advance beneficial outcomes for both people and the environment.
Transparency and Accountability
The City values transparency and accountability and understands the importance of these values in our use of AI systems. The City will ensure that the development, use, and deployment of AI systems are evaluated for and compliant with all laws and regulations applicable to the City prior to use, and will make documentation related to the use of AI systems available publicly.
Validity and Reliability
The City will work to ensure that AI systems perform reliably and consistently under the conditions of expected use, and that ongoing evaluation of system accuracy throughout the development and/or deployment lifecycle is managed, governed, and auditable, to the greatest extent possible.
Bias and Harm Reduction and Fairness
We acknowledge that AI systems have the potential to perpetuate inequity and bias resulting in unintended harms on Seattle residents. The City will evaluate AI systems through an equity lens, in alignment with our Race and Social Justice commitments, for potential impacts such as discrimination and unintended harms arising from data, human, or algorithmic bias to the extent possible.
Privacy Enhancing
The City values data privacy and understands the importance of protecting personal data. We work to ensure that policies and standard operating procedures that reduce privacy risk are in place, and are applied to the AI system throughout development, testing, deployment, and use to the greatest extent possible.
Explainability and Interpretability
The City understands the importance of leveraging AI systems, models, and outputs that are easily interpreted and explained. We work to ensure all AI systems and their models are explainable to the extent possible, and that system outputs are interpretable and communicated in clear language, representative of the context for use and deployment
Security and Resiliency
Securing our data, systems, and infrastructure is important to the City. We will ensure AI systems are evaluated for resilience and can maintain confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and critical City systems, through protection mechanisms to minimize security risks to the greatest extent possible, in alignment with governing policy and identified best practices.
Regional and National Collaborations
The City of Seattle is working with other government agencies, universities, and organizations across the country to develop and evolve approaches for using AI in a responsible manner.
Formed by the City of San Jose, CA, the Government AI Coalition is collaborating with government agencies across the country to develop standards that promote effective, equitable, trustworthy AI systems to better serve our communities. The GovAI Coalition is committed to using AI for social good, ensuring ethical and responsible AI governance, promoting vendor accountability, realizing improved efficiency, and fostering cross-agency collaboration and knowledge sharing.
MetroLab Network Generative AI for Local Governments Task Force
State of Washington’s AI Community of Practice
Seattle IT staff are engaged with WaTech’s AI Community of Practice, which continues to work to provide guidance for the development, procurement and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies by Washington state agencies. further develop artifacts to guide AI use in the state. The State of Washington issued their AI guidelines in August 2023.
Other News and Resources
Seattle IT's Interim CTO Jim Loter talks AI on GeekWire podcast