An IT administrator at an installation company is asked by the directors to draw up a list of approved AI tools, "and then we put it on the intranet". He opens a blank document and types Microsoft 365 Copilot, because there is a licence for it. Then he stops. Half the estimators use ChatGPT, the project managers have their meetings summarised by a tool he knows only by name, and nothing has ever been decided about either.
A list of approved AI tools does not start from a blank document but from what is already in use. After that you record the account and the data per tool, give every tool a status with a condition and an owner, put the list where people work, and set up a route for new tools. How that list fits into a full AI policy is covered in writing an AI policy; this piece is about the list itself.
Why not start from a blank document?
Because a list from the administrator's memory only contains the tools that pass through him. The tools used most are often the ones nobody requested: a free ChatGPT account, a browser extension, the AI feature a meeting tool gained last month.
Three sources, in ascending usefulness. The licence and account records show what was bought. A survey shows what people are willing to report. The observation of which AI domains are opened, in counts and without who, shows what actually happens. What each method misses is covered in how do you find out which AI tools employees actually use.
What do you record per tool?
| Step | What you record | The mistake it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Start from what exists | The tools that are opened, with the date first observed | A list of what you know instead of what happens |
| 2. Account and data | Which variant it concerns (free, personal, business), and which data may go in and which may not | "ChatGPT: allowed" without saying which ChatGPT |
| 3. Status and condition | One of four statuses; for limited use the condition in one sentence, for not allowed the alternative | A yes everyone reads differently, or a no with no way out |
| 4. Owner | The function in the business that uses the tool and runs the review | Rows that stay as they were filled in a year ago |
| 5. Publication | Where the decision appears: when the tool is opened, only then in a document | A PDF read once, on the first day of employment |
| 6. Route for new requests | Who assesses, within what period, with which questions, and what applies in the meantime | Requests left untouched while use continues |
Step two is skipped most often. A free or personal account runs under consumer terms: input can be used for training unless the user turns that off, and there is no data processing agreement. The business variant excludes training by default; OpenAI documents that distinction itself . On the list that makes two rows; why that difference weighs more than the name of the tool is covered in free vs business AI accounts.
Which status does a tool get, and what goes with it?
Four statuses, not two: allowed, limited use, no decision yet, not allowed. What each status means and when you choose it is covered in four statuses for AI tools. For the list, what matters most is what goes with the status.
For limited use that is the condition, in one sentence someone can follow at the moment of work. "Only with the business account." "Only for internal meetings, and participants know." "No customer data in the prompt."
For not allowed it is the alternative. A no without an alternative moves the work to a private account on a personal phone, and then the tool is not gone but invisible. "Not the free account, the business licence instead" is a decision someone can follow without stopping their work.
Why is a list without "no decision yet" incomplete?
Because a list of approved tools says nothing about the tools that are not on it, and that is the largest group. AI tools appear faster than an organisation can assess them, and existing software gains AI features without a decision.
About such a tool, everyone guesses something different. One person reads the list as exhaustive and assumes the rest is forbidden, another reads it as examples and assumes anything not refused is fine. Both readings are reasonable, and the organisation meant neither.
No decision yet solves that, because it is true: this has not been looked at yet, and in the meantime you enter public information only and request the assessment here. It is neither a ban nor an approval. It is also the backlog: everything on no decision yet that is actually used is an assessment still to be done.
Where do you publish the list?
Where the question arises, and that is not the intranet. An employee reads the list once and opens a tool hundreds of times. The decision works when it appears at opening: nothing for an allowed tool, the condition for limited use, the alternative as the first button for not allowed, and for no decision yet the request to enter public information only. How to do that without burying people in rules is covered in how do you communicate AI policy.
The first observation shows fourteen AI domains, where the administrator had written down four. Alongside Copilot and ChatGPT there are DeepL, Perplexity, the project managers' transcription tool and a tool nobody in the management team had heard of. That is not an incident. It shows that a list from memory is out of date on the day it is finished, and that ten of the fourteen rows start on no decision yet.
BeeSensible works that way. The extension reports only the domain of an opened AI tool, at most once per day per device, without a user id and without content, and sets it against a catalogue of 865 assessed tools. An administrator sees which tools have no decision yet and records the status and the condition; that decision appears in the browser when someone opens the tool, with the allowed alternative as the first button. Continuing is always possible; the product blocks nothing and decides nothing. More is on the AI tools page.
