In an advisory for their staff, the UK government has advised not to exchange pleasantries with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots advocating efficient and sustainable use of the technology.

Recently, the UK government has published a guide on how its employees should use artificial intelligence safely, fairly, ethically and sustainably.

The document “Using AI ethically and sustainably”, which is a draft and yet to be finalised, asks employees to keep their prompts short, clear and direct, use as few prompts as possible and avoid using pleasantries including thank you and please.

UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan said guidance published last week has now been updated after it advised government workers to use AI only if necessary, choose smaller models and keep prompts to a minimum to cut energy use and costs.

Being environmentally conscious and keeping an eye on running costs is, of course, important – but so is encouraging AI adoption and scaling up its use across the public sector.

This advice has been updated and we are reviewing similar pages to reflect the fullness of our… https://t.co/Nd7w263Li0

— Kanishka Narayan MP (@KanishkaNarayan) October 1, 2026

“Being environmentally conscious and keeping an eye on running costs is, of course, important – but so is encouraging AI adoption and scaling up its use across the public sector,” Narayan said on X.

“This advice has been updated and we are reviewing similar pages to reflect the fullness of our ambition for the UK,” he said.

In a research study ‘Small Talk, Big Impact: The Energy Cost of Thanking AI’ published January 2026, took 10,000 real chat traces that ended with a user “thank you,” then measured GPU, CPU, and RAM energy while open models generated a reply.

The study found that politeness with AI came with steeper energy costs for LLMs.

The guidance has also warned that AI systems, specially generative AI can produce content that appears correct but may be false, biased or unfair. Users are advised to check whether information is accurate, ask for sources and verify figures. They should also ensure that individuals and groups are treated fairly and are not referred to using stereotypes or discriminatory languages.

“You are responsible for your work when you use AI. You need to check outputs are accurate and fair, and protect sensitive information,” the document read.

The guidance has asked employees to use systems provided by their departments for government work and not include personal or identifiable information on AI tools.

“Use systems provided by your department for government work, and do not include any content with personal or identifiable information,” the guidance mentions.

The employees have been suggested to use their own judgement and avoid relying on AI when they are unsure about its output. They should also be prepared to explain decisions made using AI and be transparent about using AI to help create or edit content.

The guidance stressed that employees should consider whether AI is necessary for a task and whether a simpler tool could achieve the same result. Where AI is needed, users are advised to choose the smallest model capable of completing the task, where the model allows this. It gives Gemini Flash instead of Gemini Pro and GPT instant instead of GPT Thinking as examples.

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