Maritz首席法务官解析活动策划中的AI合规、数据隐私与风险管理

Meetings Today’s Tyler Davidson and Maritz Chief Legal Officer Jill Blood discuss AI in event contracts, attendee data privacy, intellectual property and practical risk planning.

Learn how the Maritz legal chief navigates AI in event contracts, protects attendee data, vets technology vendors and balances duty of care with creating memorable experiences.

Hear practical strategies for managing risk, planning for contingencies and safeguarding meetings- and events-related intellectual property.

Listen now:

Five key takeaways:

Event contracts are taking longer—and AI is adding complexity. Tighter budgets, more stakeholders and heightened risk awareness are slowing negotiations. Meanwhile, contracts vary widely in how they address AI, from no mention to extensive addenda.
Vet AI vendors and set clear data terms. Ask how a vendor protects and uses data, whether it trains on your information, and who can access it. Put expectations in the contract, and consider paid or closed-loop AI tools when working with sensitive or proprietary data.
Treat attendee data with care—and be transparent. Information such as food allergies, movements and participation may feel routine but can still be sensitive. Collect and retain only what’s needed; aggregate or anonymize data where possible, and consider what attendees expect—not just what the law permits.
Balance memorable experiences with thoughtful risk planning. Planners can pursue engaging, adventurous events by vetting vendors, using appropriate liability forms and insurance, and preparing contingency plans for issues such as injury, weather or venue disruption.
Plan for what could go wrong before it happens. Clear contracts and advance discussions about responsibilities and contingencies may feel excessive for a short activity or small venue booking—but they can help teams respond when a problem arises. AI regulation and contract requirements are also likely to remain moving targets, so staying informed will matter.

Transcript:

Editor's note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI and proofed by our editors. Although it is fairly accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.

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Tyler Davidson

Hello and welcome to this Meetings Today Podcast. I'm Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director for Meetings Today, and joined today by Jill Blood, the chief legal officer of Maritz, a frequent source for us on all things legal in the meetings and events industry.

So happy to have you with us here today, Jill.

Jill Blood

Happy to be here. Always, always great to talk to you, Tyler.

Tyler Davidson

And we prepared a little bit before this with some of the maybe top four or five issues in the legal sense impacting the meetings industry. And as you noted, AI sort of threads through all of them in a way.

And so, I guess we'll just sort of jump into it, you know, with the first question about event contracting. What are clients and suppliers struggling with the most these days?

Jill Blood

Yeah, absolutely. I think unfortunately we continue to see the trend. It seems like we've seen year over year of event contracts just kind of continuing to take a little longer, be a little bit more complicated and have more stakeholders in the mix. I think that's sort of, you know, there's a lot of factors for that. I think some of it is just budgets are tight.

People are more aware than ever of where every dollar is being spent and all of the eventualities that can go wrong. So, we're seeing planners with a lot more stakeholders sort of looking at contracts, being aware of contracts. Everyone's a little bit more aware of the risk and a little bit more conscious about budgets and spend. That's slowing down sort of contract life cycles, making it just a little bit harder to get contracts across the finish line.

But in addition to that, what we're seeing is sort of...this period of time where people don't quite know how to include AI and AI use in contracts. I think a new normal will emerge where we'll be used to seeing the same couple of paragraphs and we'll have kind of navigated that middle.

But for now, what we're seeing is really some contracts that don't have any language related to AI, some that have an outright prohibition on using AI, and then some that are doing, you know, five-page addendums to AI. That creates a real challenge if you don't have a dedicated team who's keeping up to speed on sort of those developments, what they look like and kind of how to navigate that changing world.

Tyler Davidson

Mm-hmm.

And you know, AI is supposed to make everything easier, but it seems like in the short term, at least until we figure it out, it complicates it a bit, but maybe like let people know who may not be familiar, why would an organization be concerned about AI at their meeting?

Jill Blood

Yeah, you know, I think there's a number of ways. My team uses it continuously. It's made us more efficient. We use it to help look at contracts. We use it to help proofread, make things more efficient.

But then on the flip side, what we see sometimes is, you know, a stakeholder within an organization who's never looked at a hotel agreement before puts that hotel agreement through AI and suddenly has a million questions for the planner to say, well, did you think about this? ChatGPT said this. And suddenly you have people who don't know the context and don't know some of those terms just sort of asking you questions based on AI.

I think that can be a challenge because it's sort of, you know, I imagine it's what it feels like for a doctor when somebody's been on WebMD and sort of comes in with their own diagnosis. That’s kind of the contracts version of that right now.

Tyler Davidson

A YouTube doctor, right? They call it....

Jill Blood

Exactly. I've been guilty of that. We all have.

Tyler Davidson

Right, everyone's a legal expert now, right? And, and a doctor, you know, yeah.

Jill Blood

Yeah, and so I think, you know, [AI] comes with big efficiencies, but also sometimes some additional churn. And then I think attendees, a lot of them, clients, attendees, planners, are worried about what happens to their data once it goes into AI, wanting to make sure that it's protected, that it's used thoughtfully, that AI is not sort of having an overreach of things with sensitive data.

So, I think setting those expectations, making sure that data is being used in a way that's predictable and in line with guests and attendee expectations is really important. And a lot of that starts at the contracting phase of kind of setting those expectations and doing that vetting.

Tyler Davidson

What questions should organizations be asking about AI in connection with events?

Jill Blood

Yeah, I think first and foremost, choosing the right vendors. You know, there's a lot more security and privacy to paid versions of things like Copilot and ChatGPT than there are to sort of the free versions you get, you get off just the web. I think also, you know, there's a lot of really incredible AI technologies in the event space right now.

But there's also some that are, you know, brand new and maybe not fully baked yet. So, I think making sure that you're vetting the partners, you're asking them about how they're keeping data secure, you're asking them if they train on your data and how they protect your data, just really understanding and taking the time to sort of vet those questions.
I think something that's interesting about AI is you can sort of use it to help it vet itself.

You can ask AI, what are questions I should ask a vendor as I'm onboarding them with a new AI technology? And it can give you some pretty good ideas to start.

But I think even just common sense questions of how are you keeping my data safe, how are you using my data, who else has access to it, will go a long way and help sort of make those vendors clear. And then you want those expectations set forth in a contract in some manner to the extent you can get it.

Tyler Davidson

Did you find more organizations, and maybe this will increase as time moves on, have proprietary AI systems that are kind of a closed loop so their information hopefully doesn't get out of the corral?

Jill Blood

You know, I think we're seeing a lot of that. Maritz certainly does kind of have paid licenses so that when we're using it, we're making sure that all of the data stays within our ecosystem. A lot of our clients have. It can be more expensive to do that.

You know, you're paying for premium licenses instead of the free version. I think depending on what you're using it for, a lot of times that money makes sense.

If you're, you know, asking ChatGPT to help you write the content of a thank you note, or, you know, think through five fun ideas to do in a city, maybe you don't need the paid version, but if you're using it to help you look at trends and attendee data or anything that [is] sort of your organization's secret sauce, I think for me, that would be the time to really give serious thought to those paid versions, even when they are notably more expensive.

Tyler Davidson

And are event professionals handling more sensitive attendee information than they even realize? And I guess that's maybe exacerbated in this era of AI.

Jill Blood

You know, I think we are, At Maritz, we think a lot about attendee trust. So, we spend a lot of time thinking about privacy laws and security requirements, but also just what is it that attendees expect of us? And almost by definition, somebody comes onsite and you're going to learn things about them, where they're going, how they spend their day, what food allergies they have, things like that that maybe don't feel sensitive in the moment, but might not be something that they want sort of put out onto the public web.

So, I think it's caused us and a lot of organizations to look at the data we retain; what we retain tied to individuals and what we aggregate.

What we find a lot is that the real value is an aggregated data. “Do you know that Jill Blood went to IMEX and she did these things?” Or, do you need to know that “a woman in her 40s from the Midwest went to IMEX and did these things?”

You can get a lot more safety, privacy and even just guest experience by aggregating and anonymizing that data.
And it sort of requires you to go through and think, where do we need to know this individual's history and where do we need to know sort of aggregated trend data? And I think we can sort of move the needle collectively as an industry by moving toward some of that aggregated data and only keeping the personalized data when you really need it.

I think that's going to become more and more important as these powerful AI tools sort of have the ability to query databases really fast and efficiently and potentially sort of use that data. You want to be thoughtful about good data hygiene and what you're keeping and how you're keeping it.

Tyler Davidson

And it's not only just the data. There's things like biometric information and facial recognition that are out there. I'm guessing you got your finger on that pulse also.

Jill Blood

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think ROI of events is sort of the holy grail. How do you measure engagement? How do you measure ROI? I think these new technologies are coming with new and exciting ways to look at how are people engaged? How are they interacting with the meeting? How are they doing these things?

There's a lot of good in that. And I think a lot of really exciting things for the industry. But it's also important that we're doing it thoughtfully and in a way that's sort of respectful of the trust that guests and attendees put in us by coming to these events.

So, I think striking a balance of sort of cool and new and powerful with safe and private and sort of respectful of how people expect their data to be used and how safe they want it to be is something, at least that Maritz, we're putting a lot of thought into, and I think others across the industry are as well.

Tyler Davidson

And transparency too, right? I mean, at all stages.

Jill Blood

Absolutely. So, I think that almost sometimes is more of our North Star than laws. You know, you can comply with the law, but what is it that attendees want and expect and would feel comfortable with really is the conversation I have weekly, if not daily.

Tyler Davidson

Any other, before we move on, any other big issues regarding AI that planners should be contemplating?

Jill Blood

You know, I think intellectual property is important. If you are, like I said, writing a thank you note, it probably doesn't matter if that thank you note is the same as what somebody else's is at a different event for a different time.

But if you're coming up with, you know, a tagline for your event, a name for your event, a logo; not that you can't use AI for that, but you want to put some thought into who owns it, if you own it, how much you want to be able to protect it, and be sort of thoughtful when you're using it for kind of that intellectual property creation. What you don't want is to sort of publicize a new logo for your event only to learn that you didn't create it in a way that you can trademark it or copyright it.

So, I think if you're creating something that you want to own that sort of is your secret sauce, it's probably worth consulting an intellectual property lawyer and really understanding sort of what you own and what you don't.

Tyler Davidson

Right, all this stuff is just being worked out still, right? And I think that's probably a key concept. Let's move on to the duty of care and maybe kind of describe what that is. And then, I write a lot of stories about people demanding more out of their meeting and convention experiences than maybe just a networking event in a ballroom with an open bar, which has its own liabilities involved in it.

But, now it's more adventurous, physical. How should organizations balance that duty of care with continuing to create compelling experiences.

Jill Blood

Yeah, I think that's a great question and something I think a lot of our struggle, our clients sort of actively think about and struggle with where, you know, there's sort of this pressure to have events that are compelling and cool and Instagram-worthy and have that sort of wow factor. But at the same time, organizers and clients are more risk-aware than I think they've ever been before. They know what can go wrong at an event, they're thoughtful about natural disasters, they're thoughtful about political unrest, about just sort of what can go wrong.

So, for us, it's all about kind of thoughtful risk and planning; making sure that if you're doing something onsite that's risky, that you're going through an approved vendor, a thoughtfully vetted vendor. You're getting the right liability forms. You're doing the right checking in advance to make sure that you are sort of controlling that to the extent that you can.

There are some things that we sort of don't like to do on our programs because we think they're too risky, but for the most part, we allow just about anything, but with thoughtful planning, sort of controls around it. I think that's where we're seeing clients say, “Let's take the risks that matter. Let's do it thoughtfully and let's try and control everything else. Let's make sure we have a contingency plan and liability waivers and strong contracts and insurance and just make sure that we're sort of forging ahead as thoughtfully and planfully as possible.”

Tyler Davidson

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, let's say you crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I's, but then something unexpected does happen. What separates organizations that can successfully work through that from those that end up in a messy contract dispute?

Jill Blood

Yeah, you know, I think an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure and that sometimes we're negotiating contracts and even our internal team will be like, this is just a contract for, you know, one afternoon, a one-hour activity. I can't believe we're spending all of this time. And it seems like sort of wasted effort until something does go wrong. And you're so glad that you sort of spelled it all out.

So, I think taking that time in advance to say, you know, what are we going to do if it rains for the outdoor event? What are we going to do if somebody gets hurt? Do we have a plan? Do we know whose responsibility is whose? Have we looked at emergency exits? Have we looked at contingency plans?

I think the good news is that planners are sort of inherently good at that. They're kind of trained and designed to say, what could go wrong and how do I have a plan? And I think a lot of risk mitigation is sort of thinking that through in advance and you hope that you never need it. But if you do and somebody does get hurt or something does go wrong, having that plan where you're not having to figure it out in real time, I think is so, so important.

Same thing's true for contracts. You want a contract for kind of the worst-case scenario. Something goes wrong, you have it laid out, you know what the expectations of each party are, even when it might feel like overkill for, you know, a restaurant rental agreement. And obviously that's a balance. You can't have a 200-page dinner rental agreement.

But you do want to put some thought into food allergies and what happens if the venue can't host you and things like that. Put some time into that sort of contingency planning and outline it up front. Up front is definitely the better time to do it than once there's a crisis and sort of tensions are high.

Tyler Davidson

For sure. Well, thank you for joining us. Before we end today, anything you're seeing on the horizon, and then also, we have a big midterm election coming up. It could be the balance of power could shift a bit, at least in the US government.

What are people talking about that? And, you know, I know it's hard to predict the ramifications, but, you know, what about that? And what are you kind of anticipating to be discussing next year if we have this same conversation?

Jill Blood

Yeah, you know, I think we always see clients sort of struggle just with uncertainty in general. I think, you know, what is the unpredictability of what laws might come through?

So, these periods of change, like election cycles, I think always do. People are thoughtful about it. We haven't heard any real consternation about this cycle.

I think the biggest things that we might see change sort on the event contract side is I think if there was sort of a change in Congress, we might see more attempts to regulate things like AI, more privacy laws coming through in a way that might impact how contracts are written and what that looks like. But also regardless of administration, those laws are hard to get through. You know, there's a lot of powerful tech companies.

There's a lot of innovation. There's a lot of reasons to sort of want to accelerate and also a lot of reasons to be thoughtful about there. And it's evolving so quickly that it's really hard to legislate around right now. I think a lot of states are trying and struggling. The EU has been trying and struggling. But I think regardless of what happens in the midterms, we're going to see more states, groups, organizations, countries, try and sort of put teeth into AI regulations; how it can be used and what that looks like.

So, I think it's going to be really important for people to the extent they can try and stay abreast of this is how you can use these technologies; this is what that looks like, and this is sort of how contract rules go forward.
I suspect for the next five or six years, how AI is regulated and what's allowed to be used for is going to be the top of all of our list of things to be thinking about.

There's sort of words that I didn't—had maybe never heard of—related to things like AI a year ago. And now, I mean, it's such a part of my day-to-day sort of workflow that it almost becomes something like e-mail where it's hard to imagine doing your job without interacting with AI all day.

And that's ramped up for us in the last year. To think about where we'll be in five years is hard to imagine.

Tyler Davidson

Well, thank you for joining us today, Jill.

Jill Blood

Of course, always great to talk to you.

Tyler Davidson

And that was Jill Blood. She is the chief legal officer of Maritz. I am Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director of Meetings Today. Thanks, Jill, for joining us, and thanks for all of you out there listening to this Meetings Today podcast.

If you're interested in more of our podcasts with meetings Industry thought leaders, head on over to meetingstoday.com and check out our podcast section. Lots of stuff in there for you from a variety of folks that are making waves in the industry, and a lot of expert advice you can glean there.

So, thanks for joining us and no matter what you're up to with the rest of the day, go out and make it great.