L1 — Align · Practical guide
Your first AI inventory: a practical template for teams
An AI inventory is a working map of how your organization uses AI: for what purpose, with which data, under whose responsibility and with what checks. Start with one team and use the findings to choose the next action.
Start with the work, then list the tools
A list of software licenses misses the difference between drafting a public announcement and evaluating job applicants. Record the intended task, the data involved and how the result is used. The same product can support very different activities.
Ask the team to describe a recent task, walk through the actual account settings and name the person responsible for checking the result. Where an answer is missing, create an action with an owner instead of guessing.
Eight fields for the first version
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Use case | What work is AI helping with? Record one use case per row, even when several use the same tool. |
| Tool and access | Name, provider, account type and whether the company manages access. |
| Owner | A role or person who can explain the use case and decide what happens next. |
| Input data | Public, internal, confidential or personal data; record categories, not the sensitive data itself. |
| Output and impact | Who uses the output? Does it support a draft, an operational action or a decision affecting people? |
| Human review | Who checks the output, what they check and when they can stop its use. |
| Storage and sharing | What is known about retention, integrations and access; mark unknowns explicitly. |
| Evidence and next review | Link to the current configuration or approved rules, record the date and the next action. |
Illustrative example: preparing a customer reply
This is an illustrative scenario, not a client case study.
- Use case
- Drafting a reply from an approved knowledge base.
- Owner and review
- The support lead owns the process. A support specialist checks the answer before sending it.
- Open question
- Is the account configuration suitable for the intended data, and has retention been checked?
- Next step
- Assign the configuration check to an owner and record the result before using that data.
Turn the inventory into decisions
- Address missing owners, unclear data handling and unreviewed outputs first.
- Distinguish an unknown from a confirmed problem. Document what you checked and when.
- Review the inventory when the use case, provider, data or integration changes.
The inventory supports governance decisions. Assess legal obligations separately for the specific use case and the organization’s role. For orientation, see the L1 — Align.