AI Policy

Last updated on 12 May 2026

Flanders Literature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make administrative processes and tasks more efficient.

This ambition has two main goals:

• to increase the individual productivity of staff, for example by saving time and improving the quality of work;
• to improve and speed up services for applicants and other stakeholders.

Flanders Literature follows the Flemish Government’s guidelines on the safe and responsible use of AI.

Flanders Literature only uses tools that meet specific privacy requirements (including privacy legislation in Belgium and the European Union, and the use of commercially sensitive and privacy-sensitive information for training LLMs). 

We do not grant third parties such as Meta access to our data for the purpose of training LLMs and  AI systems.

As a rule, staff do not accept AI suggestions at face value and always scrutinise them critically, just as they do with texts from colleagues, freelancers or interns.

AI is used to support work, not to replace it.

Final responsibility for operational work, advice and decision-making always lies with people, including:

• staff members;
• advisory committees;
• the Decision-Making Committee;
• the Appeals Committee;
• the Board of Directors of Flanders Literature.

Human expertise always adds more value than an AI tool, which remains a technical aid.

Flanders Literature has drawn up this AI policy and updates it regularly. Updates are made when new tools are introduced or when the organisation’s ambitions regarding AI expand.

Staff members who use AI tools receive training to ensure correct and responsible use. This includes:

• formal training sessions;
• regularly raising awareness of various aspects of AI.

Flanders Literature recognises the ecological impact of AI. The organisation therefore chooses tools that have a clear strategy to limit their environmental footprint. Staff are trained to:

• assess when the use of AI is meaningful and adds proven value;
• prompt efficiently, in order to minimise environmental impact with each query.

Although free AI tools offer many possibilities, they are often limited in functionality and cannot always guarantee the same level of security as paid solutions. Flanders Literature is therefore exploring professional, paid AI applications. At present, the organisation is testing Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered chatbot that helps staff work smarter, faster and more efficiently. It is a guided assistant within Microsoft applications, designed as a digital colleague to support daily tasks. The system can help with drafting emails, creating documents, searching for information, producing quick summaries, managing meetings… Below are some specific examples of how staff at Flanders Literature are currently using the tool.

Support for work processes

At Flanders Literature, Copilot is currently used for tasks such as:

• drafting meeting minutes;
• writing advisory texts;
• transcribing and summarising online meetings;
• acting as a brainstorming partner when drafting policy papers;
• summarising and conducting targeted searches through large volumes of information on SharePoint;
• devising angles for marketing campaigns and promotional copy;
• providing feedback on texts and ideas;
• generating interview questions, titles or social media posts for news items.

Translations

AI may be used to support the translation of promotional texts, but never of literary texts.

Assignments that are traditionally outsourced to literary translators will continue to be handled by literary translators. It is expressly not the intention to replace the vulnerable group of literary translators with AI, for both ethical and quality-related reasons. For translations that would otherwise be produced using an (online) dictionary or a translation tool such as Google Translate or DeepL, AI may be used as a replacement in the future. Literatuur Vlaanderen makes the following distinction:

Promotional texts:

• social media posts;
• advertisements;
• promotional printed material;
• short news updates (for example about prizes or grants);
• event reports;
• best practice examples with input from various partners (whether in English or not);
• short quotes (for example from interviews);
• introductions to book selections;
• press releases;
• announcements of workshops, training sessions or other events;
• programmes or programme booklets.

Literary texts:

• columns;
• speeches;
• essays;
• jury reports;
• in-depth interviews;
• authors’ diaries;
• texts about books on our website;
• sample translations or other translations of literary work.

Visual material

For photographic material, we continue to work with professional photographers and always credit the copyright where possible. For graphic design, we use Canva. Canva is currently integrating AI into the tool. We are monitoring this development, but for the time being we do not use AI to generate or optimise visuals.

All information used by Literatuur Vlaanderen staff in Copilot remains within the organisation. Microsoft does not have access to this information and therefore cannot use it to train Large Language Models (LLMs). 

Microsoft 365 Copilot complies with the existing privacy, security and compliance obligations for Microsoft 365 commercial customers, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the European Union (EU) data border. Prompts, responses and data accessed via Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundational Large Language Models (LLMs), including those used by Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot employs multiple security measures, including, but not limited to, blocking malicious content, detecting sensitive material and preventing prompt injection (jailbreak attacks). More info. 

Microsoft has ambitious sustainability goals. By 2030, the company aims to be carbon-negative, water-positive and completely waste-free. This means data centres powered by renewable energy, innovative technologies such as liquid cooling, and even investments in large-scale carbon removal. AI itself plays a key role in this sustainability journey. Copilot can help programmers write environmentally friendly code or support companies with their sustainability analyses. In this way, AI is not only made more energy-efficient, but also used as a lever for a climate-friendly digital future. More info.

Important: Microsoft regularly requests feedback whilst using Microsoft 365 applications. Literatuur Vlaanderen does not provide this feedback. In this way, we ensure that business-sensitive or privacy-sensitive information cannot be used for the evaluation and training of Microsoft solutions.