the people whose entire job is pricing risk have decided ai is not worth covering. in january the standard general liability form started excluding it by name.

the condition is that ai was insured by accident. it sat quietly inside cyber and tech e&o policies that never mentioned it, the market called that silent ai, and in january the insurance services office published a standard endorsement that removes bodily injury, property damage and advertising injury attributable to generative ai from commercial general liability, while absolute ai exclusions started appearing in d&o, employment practices and fiduciary lines. the cost falls hardest on companies that do not think of themselves as ai companies, because the exposure is an employee pasting a contract into a chatbot, a vendor tool screening applicants, or marketing copy that borrowed something, and each of those gets pleaded as a different kind of claim, so four policies can each push it out through a different clause. most of the erosion is not a line on the declarations page either: it arrives as a revised base form or a slightly narrower definition, and it surfaces at the claim, which is the worst possible moment to learn what your policy means.

the fake fix is asking your broker whether you are covered for ai, which produces a reassuring yes, because coverage turns on how a plaintiff characterises the claim rather than on whether the word appears anywhere. do the version that holds. before the next renewal, put it to the broker in writing: which of our policies now contain ai exclusions or endorsements, what are the form numbers, and what is carved back in. then send one page listing where ai actually touches the operation, hiring, customer messages, contracts, code, marketing, so the answer comes back about your exposure instead of the category.