What AI can and cannot do in a tender response

Think of an AI writing tool as a quick, careless assistant. It can sort, rearrange and draft. It can't know your business, and it can't answer for what you hand in.

That split decides most of what follows. Use the tool for work that a mistake won't hurt much, and keep people on the work where a mistake could cost you the contract.

Where it helps

These are jobs where you can check the result quickly:

• Turning a long document into a plain checklist of what the buyer asks for.
• Putting your own rough notes into a first draft you then rewrite.
• Cutting a long answer down to a word limit.
• Rewording a clumsy paragraph so it reads clearly.
• Listing the questions you haven't answered yet, once you've drafted.

Each of these starts from material you already have. That matters. A tool working from your real notes has less room to wander than one asked to "write a strong answer about our experience".

A buyer may allow this. A UK Cabinet Office note, published 17 February 2025, says supplier AI use "is not prohibited". It adds that buyers should understand the risks, as they would with a hired bid writer.¹ That note covers UK central government. Other buyers may set their own rules. The rules to look for are covered later in the series.

Where it goes wrong

The main problem is confident invention. Wikipedia calls it a hallucination when an AI response contains false or misleading information "presented as fact".²

The UK note puts it in bidding terms. Text from a language model may contain misleading statements, and facts or references that look plausible can still be false.¹ Australia's privacy regulator agrees. Generative AI can give "outputs that are inaccurate but appear credible".³

In a tender, that could look like a certification you don't hold, a project you never delivered, or a referee who doesn't exist. The sentence would read smoothly. That's the danger.

The National AI Centre adds that AI can read your instructions differently from how you meant them.⁴ So a draft can also answer a slightly different question from the one the buyer asked.

What stays with a person

Australia's National AI Centre says a human should oversee any AI in use.⁴ In a bid, a named person owns each of these:

• The choice to bid at all.
• The price and the terms you can live with.
• Every claim about what you've done, hold or can deliver.
• Referees, licences, insurance and other documents.
• Any declaration the buyer asks you to sign.
• Reading the buyer's own rules on AI use.

A simple test before you rely on it

Ask of any output: could I show the evidence for this sentence if the buyer asked tomorrow? If the answer is no, cut it or fix it.

The next pages go in order. Start with reading a long tender document with AI. Then collect your facts in an answer bank.