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Williamson County approves enterprise ChatGPT licenses after public questions about risks
Summary
The county purchased enterprise licenses for ChatGPT to provide controlled, county-owned AI tools for staff productivity. Public commenters urged caution; commissioners approved the item 4-0.
Williamson County Commissioners Court approved the purchase of enterprise ChatGPT licenses on July 15, authorizing a pilot deployment intended to give staff a controlled way to use generative AI for productivity tasks.
County Auditor Nathan Zinsmeyer introduced the consent agenda earlier in the meeting, and the item was pulled from consent for discussion and public comment. Members of the public raised concerns about accuracy, data security and the technology’s readiness. Richard Litowski, a Georgetown resident who signed up to speak on item 20, asked, “So what's the county intend to do with this type of technology that you're spending $70,000 to acquire?”
Richard Semple, Technology Services, told the court the purchase was for enterprise licenses that keep inputs and outputs as county property and prevent OpenAI from using county prompts to train public models. “That data stays property of Williamson County. It's not used in any other capacity, and we're able to have total control over anything that's input or output from that system,” Semple said. He described a phased rollout: 150 licenses, training for users and policies limiting use of confidential data. Semple also said employees would be required to disclose AI use when appropriate: “If someone were used to generate an image, there's proper attribution that that image was generated by AI or with the assistance of AI.”
Public commenters urged extra caution. Bill Keverlaw, who identified himself as a retired systems engineer and Navy captain, said he had tested the product and warned of “ethical and technological glitches.” Richard Litowski and others questioned whether the county could verify the tool’s outputs and protect sensitive data. Semple and other county staff said the system would not be integrated into the county network and that policies would bar use with confidential information.
Commissioner Long moved approval, the motion was seconded, and the court voted 4-0 to approve item 20.
The court directed Technology Services to proceed with training and policy development before broad deployment. The county did not detail specific departmental uses beyond “report writing” and other productivity tasks. The expenditure presented at the meeting was described during public comment as roughly $70,000 for the proposed set of enterprise licenses.
