Data Governance

Why You Need a Records Retention Plan Before Building Anything with AI Introduction Every week brings news of another organization rushing to deploy AI tools—feeding customer data, internal emails, or years of transaction logs into large language models. The promise is real, but so is the risk. Among the many pieces of advice circulating in privacy circles, one principle is quietly gaining traction: get your records retention practices right before you touch AI. The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) recently published guidance framing retention policies as a prerequisite for responsible AI use, and it’s a message worth taking seriously. ...

Before You Let AI Loose on Your Data, Get Your Records Retention in Order Adopting AI tools that process personal data is rarely a simple plug-and-play decision. Many organizations focus on model accuracy, training data, or integration challenges. But a foundational step often gets overlooked: updating records retention policies. Without a solid retention framework, AI deployments can lead to compliance failures, privacy violations, and regulatory penalties. Recent guidance from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) underscores this point—records retention should be a prerequisite, not an afterthought. ...