‘My Co-Worker Uses AI, and I’m Sick of Redoing Her Work’

Dear Boss,

I am a senior project manager in a nonprofit. Over the summer, I had been working on a series of focus groups and was assigned Lola as an intern. Our office aims to provide meaningful training to our interns, as nearly 80 percent of them are hired after their internships, so I assigned Lola to write one of the focus-group reports. She was present at the focus group itself and was given the audio recording and transcript, plus a report template with guiding questions in order to complete the assignment. 

I had a previous experience with an intern producing reports with AI, which required tons of rework. So when I first assigned this to Lola, I explained that AI is not a reliable tool for this type of work, as it often provides incorrect answers, fabricates quotations, and can hallucinate during data analysis.

Well, Lola turned in the report, and it was clear she had used AI. The report included multiple “quotations” that were not things that had been said at all, and the analysis was incorrect. I told my manager we were going to miss the deadline since we would have to redo the work. In my feedback to Lola, I didn’t call out the AI use specifically, but I pointed out every quote that was made up and highlighted where the analysis was wrong. This was easy for me to do because I had attended the focus group too. But I pointed out to my boss that if that hadn’t been the case, I might not have recognized the problems with her work.

At the end of her internship, Lola ended up being hired as a junior project manager. I hadn’t been the only one working with her, so I assumed she had improved. But she was recently assigned to work with me again and was responsible for a series of interviews and reports. She received a detailed protocol for the work, including a template with guiding questions (again).

When she sent me the reports, I could immediately see that she must have uploaded the interview transcripts into AI, entered the guiding questions one by one, and then copied and pasted the answers. The report was confusing and lacked key information. I didn’t feel I should mention the use of AI in my feedback since I was only 90 percent sure that that’s what she had done, so once again, I just flagged the incorrect info and places that needed further elaboration. She then sent me a revised version. I’m again 90 percent sure that she just used my comments as prompts for AI and then adjusted the specific parts of the text I flagged, without checking its consistency with information included elsewhere.

I was really pissed off at this point, as we had already missed a deadline. I just told her she had to be more careful about storytelling, reader-friendliness, and consistency, and declared her task closed. I felt asking to revise text again was a waste of my time; she would have continued working with AI anyway, and I was fed up with providing encouraging feedback to someone whose work shows no real skill beyond copying and pasting.

I need to talk with my manager about Lola at this point, and I believe it should also be reported to higher-ups. This is a serious quality matter, as we could have our project budget cut if an analysis is poor quality and AI use is identified. I truly believe Lola’s employment should be reconsidered, or at least she needs better training. But I’m not her direct manager; she’s just been assigned to assist me in my work, and I’m unsure how much standing I have to take this on directly. How should I deal with this massive and inappropriate use of AI from a colleague?

As the person charged with reviewing Lola’s work, as well as someone whose own assignments have been affected, you absolutely have standing to address the AI use. In fact, I’d argue that you don’t have a choice. An employee assigned to help with your projects has been turning in work so shoddy that you’re missing deadlines and you’re seeing evidence that she’s jeopardizing your project budget. It would actually be strange not to raise it. If I were your boss who found out about these issues later on and realized you hadn’t told me what was happening, I’d wonder about your judgment in staying silent — and be concerned about what else you weren’t speaking up about!

It’s time to address your suspicions that Lola is using AI head-on. You should raise it on two different fronts: with Lola herself, and with management.

There are situations when you suspect someone has used AI to produce poor work where you don’t need to call out the AI use itself. Instead, you can give feedback focused on the specific problems you see — whether it’s inaccuracies, lack of nuance, poor structure, overreliance on buzzwords, inconsistencies, being excessively generic, etc. Ultimately, the issue is not that the person used AI but that they produced bad work. The hope would be that hearing this feedback would nudge them to realize AI isn’t serving the purpose they thought it would; what they do from there to fix the problems it caused is up to them.

But you do need to address AI usage more explicitly when your company has policies specifically prohibiting its use, such as for data security or legal reasons, or when your initial rounds of feedback about the work itself aren’t sinking in.

In this situation, you tried giving Lola specific feedback about the problems with her work. She responded by turning in work with the exact same problems, plus some new ones. This would be egregious under any circumstances, but it’s particularly so because you told her early on not to use AI for these projects. The problem is significant enough at this point that it’s worth naming what you suspect is going on.

You should also talk to your manager (and to Lola’s, if that’s a different person) and explain what’s been happening. Your own manager should be looped in because the person assigned to help you with your work not only isn’t helping but is causing you to miss deadlines. At a minimum, Lola needs closer supervision and better coaching about how to approach projects like these. She’s also demonstrated poor enough judgment, particularly with the second project, that her manager should be taking a closer look at her work to see if there are other problems that have been flying under the radar.

Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here.)