For Heads-of · Practitioner
ASD publishes its position on AI and Simplified Technical English
The ASD Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group has issued a white paper on AI and ASD-STE100. It accepts AI as a support for STE writing and translation, on three conditions: the standard takes priority, a person stays responsible for the text, and AI-assisted content is declared with its limits stated. It endorses no AI tool.
- ASD-STE100
- Simplified Technical English
- AI governance
- controlled language
What it says
A three-page position statement from the Maintenance Group and its AI Task Team. AI and language models can speed drafting, improve terminology consistency and support multilingual documentation, and automated STE checks already exist with varying accuracy. Against that, the paper names three losses: reliability, terminology control and the traceability of content decisions. Its governing line is that the standard takes priority and AI must support rather than override it.
What it asks of organisations
Supportive use only, with a human author who remains accountable. Disclaimers wherever AI-assisted content is used, stating scope and limitations. Internal policies for data handling, model validation and quality assurance. In-house or proprietary tools where confidentiality is critical. Extra caution on safety-critical content, where model performance is least reliable. The paper cites the EU AI Act, UNESCO's AI ethics principles, ISO's AI standards and the OECD recommendations as the frameworks that apply.
How this site's STE section relates
The Maintenance Group endorses no AI tool, and this site is not affiliated with it. The ASD-STE100 section here was built on the same conditions the paper now states: every finding cites the rule it comes from, a person who knows the standard accepts or rejects it, the dictionary reports what it cannot resolve rather than passing it, and nothing produced here is evidence that a document conforms to the standard. Each STE hub page and guide now carries a notice on how AI is used there and links to the paper.