When Training Becomes Evidence: Legal Defensibility in the Age of AI
Description:
As AI tools are increasingly used to generate, personalize, and accelerate training content, they introduce new risks that directly affect legal defensibility. Training created or supported by AI may be faster: but speed, scale, and automation can quietly weaken clarity, consistency, accountability, and intent if not deliberately governed.
This session examines how AI changes the evidentiary role of training and why traditional “check-the-box” approaches become even more fragile when AI is involved. Participants will explore how AI-generated or AI-assisted learning can undermine defensibility through inconsistency, hallucinated guidance, blurred ownership, and unclear human oversight.
Rather than focusing on how to use AI, this session focuses on how to protect training from AI-introduced risk while still enabling innovation.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Explain how the use of AI in training development can introduce legal and governance risk, particularly when learning artifacts are reviewed under scrutiny.
2. Identify common AI-related failure points that weaken training defensibility, including inconsistency, lack of traceability, and unclear ownership of content and decisions.
3. Distinguish between AI-assisted efficiency and defensible learning design, with an emphasis on where human judgment and documentation are required.
4. Design guardrails for AI use in training development that protect clarity, consistency, and legal defensibility while allowing responsible innovation.
Presenter: Cara North
Cara North is an award-winning learning experience leader with experience spanning higher education, corporate L&D, and consulting, She’s the founder of The Learning Camel, the author of Learning Experience Design Essentials, and an adjunct instructor at Boise State University. She is also a certificate course facilitator for ATD and the founder of The Monthly 60, a learning and development community of practice. Cara lives in Columbus, Ohio with her partner and their four cats: Bib Fortuna, Pollock Wallace, Sidious Milo, and Saffron Leiko. She claims to run the household, but the cats remain unconvinced.
ATD Capability Model:
Personal: Compliance & Ethical Behavior
Professional: Technology Application
Organizational: Data & Analytics, Future Readiness
