Glossary · Document and evidence governance
AI-assisted documentation
In technical documentation, AI-assisted documentation is the use of AI to create, transform, retrieve, compare or review documentation under defined governance and human control. The organization remains responsible for the content, and AI output is a draft or a finding until a qualified person approves it.
- AI
- Technical documentation
In one sentence
AI-assisted documentation uses AI to draft, translate, retrieve or check content, always under defined governance with human approval.
Example
A writer uses a language model to compare the maintenance manual of a CNC machine against the latest spare-parts list; the model reports three mismatched part numbers, which the writer verifies before changing the approved topics.
How it applies
- Governance: Define which tasks AI may support (drafting, terminology checks, translation, comparison, retrieval), which sources it may use and who approves the result. Record the tool, model version and prompt set used for released content.
- Safety-critical content: Warnings, limit values and procedures must come from approved sources and be checked word for word. Generated paraphrases of safety-critical information are not acceptable without review.
- Sources: Restrict retrieval to content inside the authoritative source boundary. An assistant that also reads draft or outdated files will mix them into its answers.
- Evidence: Treat model or index changes as changes under document control and watch for AI drift.
AI-assisted documentation vs. AI-generated documentation
In AI-assisted documentation, people remain the authors and approvers and AI supports specific steps. Content published without human review is AI-generated documentation, which cannot carry the accountability that safety information and conformity documents require.