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Approaching AI with fingers on the brakes

AI can help NICA coaches save time, but responsible use matters. Explore NICA’s AI guidelines for protecting athlete privacy, maintaining brand integrity, and creating trustworthy content.

Photo by Val Visuals, South Carolina Cycling League

Right now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is part of the daily news cycle and top-of-mind in many fields. And for good reason—AI has quickly become a powerful work and life companion but has just as quickly proven itself to have significant pitfalls.

In the volunteer coaching space, the use of AI is attractive because it can be a time-saver, seemingly lets us create professional-looking content without the need for professional skills, and helps us to work within small team budgets. In short, AI allows us to do more with less.

AI very well may be a useful tool for teams, but coaches should think twice before turning to using it in their NICA role. NICA values, community trust, and a commitment to athlete safety are more important than what AI can offer.

NICA’s marketing and communications team has created AI Tools & the NICA Brand—a comprehensive guide for coaches, staff, and volunteers navigating the space. In this article, we sum up a few of the highlights.

Principles of AI use in NICA content

We are responsible for what we publish. Inaccuracies or slop that go out make us look bad and erode trust and credibility.

  • AI use should be assistive, not generative. Create stuff ourselves and use AI to review and polish. Don’t let AI create.
  • Brand Integrity comes first. Never let AI alter brandmarks, logos, or voice.
  • AI-generated imagery is strongly discouraged. Real photos fuel our storytelling. Generating images of minors—or feeding images of our kids into AI—raises serious ethical and safety concerns.

When (and when not) to use AI

It’s OK to use AI for:

  • Coming up with content ideas for emails, newsletters, announcements, social media captions, and team documents, as well as polishing up at the end.
  • Suggesting activities and ride ideas for team practices.
  • Translations when communicating with families whose first language is not English.
  • Brainstorming in other areas of team leadership.

Maybe (proceed with caution):

  • Creating graphics or images. Real photos are best, though, and never upload images of NICA student-athletes to AI.
  • Editing images or graphics. AI can alter the nature of content, however, so use it sparingly here. Never use AI to alter pro photographers’ images without their permission.
  • Writing social media captions. Though human-written posts are still more effective. Remember to check content against NICA social media guidelines.

What to avoid with AI:

  • As the sole creator of content without human input or review
  • When working with personally identifiable information (PII) of athletes, families, or coaches (names, contact info, photos, etc)
  • Altering NICA logos or brandmark
  • Creating photorealistic images of riders, coaches, or families. Don’t “feed” AI any images of minors.
  • Generating anything that is inaccurate or conflicts with NICA’s handbook or codes of conduct.

The topic of artificial intelligence is broad, and the advice above is just a sample of recommendations. For much more information and guidance, check out AI Tools & the NICA Brand.

Special thanks to SPECIALIZED, a NICA platinum level partner.

NICA partners help kids gain access to a thriving and engaged cycling community.

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