Using AI to draft a job description, with a human bias-check before it screens anyone
AI writing the posting is fine. AI deciding who gets rejected, unaudited, is how you end up in the case law.
Not legal advice. Sally roasts behaviour and use-cases in general, never your specific situation, and nothing here replaces a real lawyer. The cases are real; what you do about them is between you and someone licensed to tell you.
Letting AI draft and polish a job description, while keeping the actual screening decisions human-reviewed and bias-checked.
EEOC v. iTutorGroup, Inc.
No. 1:22-cv-02565 (E.D.N.Y.), settled 2023 Ā· US (EEOC)
The boundary case. The problem was never AI touching hiring. It was automated screening rejecting people on a protected characteristic with no human check.
$365,000 and years of monitoring. Keep AI on the writing and a human on the deciding, and you stay on the right side of this line.
This is the safe lane. Using AI to draft a posting, tighten the language, or flag wording that might deter candidates is low risk and genuinely helpful. The danger lives one step later, when the same enthusiasm gets pointed at automatically rejecting applicants without anyone checking the pattern.
Keep the model on the writing side and a human on the deciding side, and you get the productivity without the disparate-impact exposure. The cautionary settlements all share one trait: nobody audited what the automation was screening out.
āLet it write the ad all day. The moment you let it quietly reject people, you have hired a lawsuit instead of a candidate.ā
- 01Let AI draft and refine the posting, then have a human own the screening criteria.
- 02Audit any automated filtering for disparate impact before it touches a real candidate.
- 03Check AI-written postings for language that could deter protected groups, then keep the final call human.
Not legal advice. General commentary on a use-case, not your situation. Talk to a real lawyer before you act.