Docusign’s AI-Powered Future, With Customer Control at Its Core

Key takeaways:

• One important way we ensure AI-assisted capabilities in Docusign provide the best results is by utilizing anonymized customer data to train and improve our AI models. Our customers can gain significantly more value by sharing their agreement data to improve our AI models — making them more precise and efficient, and helping us offer better AI-assisted experiences faster.

• The AI Data Controls setting is an in-product data sharing setting that provides additional, built-in controls for your account administrator to manage whether your organization’s data is used for training purposes.  

• If you don’t see the AI Data Controls setting in your Docusign Account Settings page, this means Docusign will not use your account’s data to improve our AI offerings. 

• Ethical and responsible development is foundational to our approach in developing AI-assisted solutions. Docusign’s AI Innovation principles outline our commitment to operating with integrity and empathy as we develop solutions that drive value for our customers.

AI is an incredibly powerful tool that can empower teams who deal with agreements — from legal and sales, to procurement and HR — to work faster, do less manual work, and be able to have their business-critical information available at their fingertips. Since early 2020, Docusign has been at the forefront of bringing agreement intelligence to our customers, using AI to summarize agreements for signers and offer analytics that answer key business questions around agreements. And that was just the beginning.

Recent advances in AI, when combined with our deep experience in the agreement space, have allowed Docusign to build powerful new capabilities for businesses of all kinds. With the launch of Docusign IAM — our Intelligent Agreement Management platform — Docusign is continuing to build AI that creates an assistive experience across your agreement process and shows you valuable insights from your agreements. And we’re doing so with trust, transparency, and control at the heart of our approach.

A trust-centered approach to improving Docusign AI for our customers

As with other companies that use AI, one important way Docusign will ensure our AI-assisted offerings provide the best value, experience, and results for our customers in the future is by utilizing customer data to train and improve the AI models powering your experience.

Sharing your data with Docusign to improve our AI models will always be a choice — not a requirement. However, Docusign’s customers can gain significantly more value by sharing their anonymized agreement data to improve our AI models. Training our AI models with a wide variety of anonymized customer contracts and use cases can make them more precise and efficient, and helps us offer better AI-assisted experiences faster.

For example, AI models trained on real-world procurement contracts will be better tuned to help unlock the specific insights and data in the contract you’re negotiating with a new vendor — things like the identities of the parties, effective and renewal dates, and so on. They can also offer agreement-specific suggestions — such as recommending the right clause language based on the type of vendor you’re bringing on — and reduce risk by identifying and suggesting where agreements don't align to your company standards.

And just as we’re committed to developing innovative solutions that put your data to work for your business, we’re equally committed to treating your data with the security and rigor you’ve come to expect from Docusign over the past 20 years. That means putting our customers in the driver’s seat and giving them complete control over whether their data is used to improve our AI solutions and offerings.

Introducing additional control: the AI Data Controls setting

When we improve our AI models using customer data, we only use data that is anonymized and aggregated, from customers who have given consent via their contract, including those who purchase an IAM plan on Docusign’s website.  The AI Data Controls setting is an in-product AI data sharing setting that provides additional, built-in control for your account administrator to manage whether your organization's data is used for training purposes. 

For customers who provide contractual consent, the in-product setting will be set to “on” but your account administrators can turn this setting “off” at any time, using the in-product controls. If a customer has not provided contractual consent, the in-product toggle will be disabled and set to “off” and cannot be changed by an account administrator. Only documents sent or uploaded by consenting Docusign accounts will be used for AI training.

When the AI Data Controls setting is available, it will appear on the Docusign Settings page of your account.

The AI Data Controls setting began rolling out to all Docusign customers on May 30, 2024, starting with US-based IAM Core plans, IAM for Sales, and other customers with Docusign Navigator. We have since expanded to additional customers and will roll this setting out to all customers over time. If the control does not appear on your Docusign Account Settings page or it appears on your page but is set to “off”, Docusign will not use your data to improve our AI offerings — even if your contract contains language that consents to sharing.

Innovating responsibly

Ethical and responsible AI development is foundational to our approach in developing AI-assisted solutions, which is why we developed our AI Innovation principles. These principles outline our commitment to operating with integrity and empathy as we develop solutions that drive value for our customers.

As we execute on these principles, we have created frameworks and tools that are in keeping with key privacy-by-design principles and industry standard practices and will continue to evolve and enhance our efforts in this space. For example, when we train Docusign models using customer data, we only use customer data with their consent, and after that data has been aggregated and anonymized.

Trust is at the core of our business and woven into everything we do. Our customers trust Docusign’s products to securely and safely manage the billions of mission-critical agreements they need to run their business every day. We value the trust you place in us and we will continue to prioritize privacy, security, and responsible development practices as we use AI to help deliver even more value for our customers.