Board packs are getting longer, cycles are faster, and expectations from investors and regulators keep rising. For many boardroom professionals, generative AI now looks less like a buzzword and more like a practical way to cope with the volume of work.
The real challenge is knowing where to start. Not every task should be automated, and not every AI feature belongs in the boardroom. Checklists help turn a vague ambition to “use AI” into a controlled, step by step plan.
Below are pragmatic generative AI checklists for governance teams, corporate secretaries, and committee chairs who want to move from experiments to safe, useful adoption.
Why boardroom AI needs checklists, not hype
Generative AI can draft text, summarise reports, and search across years of minutes in seconds. It can also hallucinate, embed bias, and mishandle confidential data if it is not governed carefully.
That is why many governance experts now recommend structured frameworks and checklists rather than ad hoc pilots. For example, the Corporate Governance Institute has published guidance on how to govern generative AI, emphasising that boards need clear principles, risk controls, and accountability rather than unstructured experimentation.
Checklists are a simple way to put those principles into daily practice.
Checklist 1: What to automate first – quick wins for the boardroom
These are low risk, high value tasks that generative AI can support early, especially when embedded in secure board platforms.
A. Meeting preparation and agendas
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Draft first version of board and committee agendas based on annual calendars.
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Suggest time allocations and sequencing of items.
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Flag recurring items that may be overdue, such as policy reviews or risk deep dives.
B. Board pack summaries and highlights
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Generate concise executive summaries for long reports.
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Highlight key changes since the last meeting, rather than re-stating everything.
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Produce bullet lists of decisions required, risks escalated, and open questions.
C. Minutes and action tracking
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Turn structured notes or transcripts into draft minutes that follow the house style.
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Extract decisions, approvals, and assignments into an action log.
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Suggest standard wording for resolutions and follow up items.
D. Search across past decisions
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Enable natural language queries such as “When did we last discuss our cyber insurance limits” or “What did we decide on the dividend policy last year”.
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Surface relevant sections of past minutes and packs without manual trawling.
These use cases keep people firmly in charge while removing repetitive work.
Checklist 2: What not to automate yet
Some tasks should stay human led, even if tools claim to help. As Nasdaq’s board governance commentary on AI risk management checklists notes, directors remain accountable for strategy, ethics, and culture regardless of how much technology is involved.
Treat the following areas as “assist only” or “no automation”:
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Strategic recommendations
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Do not ask AI to choose between strategic options or propose target companies for M&A.
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Performance evaluations and sensitive HR decisions
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Avoid AI generated judgments on individual directors, executives, or staff.
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Board dynamics and culture assessments
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Use AI to synthesise survey comments at most, not to interpret chemistry or trust levels.
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Final wording of high stakes disclosures
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Keep critical market announcements, risk factor wording, and regulatory correspondence under tight human control.
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AI can support these areas with background research or drafting suggestions, but human judgement must lead.
Checklist 3: Governance and risk controls for generative AI
Even quick win use cases need structure. Before rolling out AI features around board work, boardroom professionals can run through a governance checklist like this:
Policy and oversight
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Is there a written AI policy that covers board and committee use, not just customer facing systems?
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Which committee owns oversight of generative AI in governance processes?
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Are reporting lines between management, legal, internal audit, and the board clearly defined?
Data protection and confidentiality
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Are board documents processed only in secure, enterprise tools, not public AI websites?
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Is there a clear statement on whether prompts and outputs are used to train shared models?
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Are data residency and retention settings aligned with regulatory and internal requirements?
Human review and accountability
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Do workflows require a named person to review AI generated summaries or minutes before they become official?
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Are directors explicitly reminded that AI outputs are assistance, not authoritative truth?
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Is there an audit trail showing who requested which AI action, on which document, and when?
Frameworks such as the RAILS AI Risk Management guidance for legal teams provide practical steps for building this kind of control environment around generative AI, with a focus on clear roles and continuous improvement. (rails.legal)
Checklist 4: Skills and communication for boardroom professionals
Technology is only part of the story. Generative AI adoption in the boardroom also depends on people understanding what the tools do and how to talk about them.
Skills and literacy
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Short, focused briefings for directors on how generative AI works and its limitations.
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Training for corporate secretaries on prompt design, reviewing AI outputs, and spotting errors.
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Access to external resources on AI governance for committee chairs and lead independent directors.
Communication and culture
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Clear messages that AI is there to reduce administrative load, not to shrink board independence.
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Opportunities for directors to test tools on non-critical material and give feedback.
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Explicit encouragement to challenge AI outputs and to ask “How was this produced”.
Tools and platforms that make checklists real
Most boards will not build their own generative AI stack. They will rely on governance platforms that integrate AI features within a secure, auditable environment.
Solutions such as boardroompro aim to bring agendas, packs, minutes, and AI-assisted workflows into one place so that policies, permissions, and logs are consistent. The checklists above can then be configured as practical rules in the system rather than sitting in a forgotten PDF.
Starting small, learning fast
Generative AI can be a powerful ally for boardroom professionals who are under pressure to do more with less time. The safest path forward is not a grand transformation. It is a series of small, well governed steps guided by clear checklists.
Automate the routine, review everything important, keep humans in charge of judgement, and update the checklists as you learn. Boards that follow this approach will gain real productivity benefits without sacrificing the trust that governance depends on.