The Pico Rivera City Council voted Oct. 28 to adopt a new citywide artificial intelligence policy that establishes rules for responsible AI use by staff and launches a phased pilot of Microsoft Copilot.

Assistant City Manager Angelina Graves told the council the policy centers on five principles: transparency and accountability; ethical use and privacy protection; equity and fairness; governance and oversight; and staff training and incident response. "We use AI to enhance, not replace, human decision making," Graves said during the presentation.

Staff recommended Microsoft Copilot as the initial platform because the citys data already lives in Microsoft 365; Graves said Copilot will draw only on the citys validated internal data set in the citys Microsoft tenant rather than querying external sources when used in the work environment. The policy includes dos and donts: staff must fact-check AI-generated content, use city accounts for AI tasks, log usage for transparency, and must not submit confidential or sensitive data into the tool.

Councilmembers asked about hosting, liability and whether limiting Copilot to internal data would handicap research. Graves and staff said Copilot is cloud-hosted in a tenant restricted to city data and that the city completed cybersecurity planning and vendor contract addenda; staff said web-based research and validation will continue using standard methods when required.

The council approved the policy on a 4 0 roll call vote after a motion by Councilmember Laura and a second from Councilmember Lutz. Staff said it will form an AI use committee, run a small-user pilot (train-the-trainer model), and begin phased deployment and training after completion of the pilot.