AFL resignation: Staff member quits after being told she could not opt out of using Microsoft Copilot
The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement
Gabrielle Boyle resigned from the AFL three days before Microsoft’s AI assistant was switched on throughout the organisation.<br>She had asked whether she could opt out. The AFL told her, in writing, that she could not.
Gabrielle Boyle describes herself as an AI refuser. She quit her dream job at the AFL.Chelsea Taylor“You do not have a right to request that your work not be accessed by our AI systems,” the code’s HR executive Ciara Gilchrist wrote to her on June 23, according to documents seen by this masthead.<br>Boyle sent her resignation on June 26. Microsoft’s Copilot went live on June 29.
Advertisement
From her Coffs Harbour base, Boyle was the AFL’s participation manager for northern NSW, responsible for getting five- to 12-year-olds to play football in the Hunter region, the North Coast and the central and north-west. She describes herself as an AI refuser who will not use ChatGPT, Copilot or any other large language model.<br>Her objections run from the immediate to the apocalyptic: the water and power consumed by data centres, what the technology is doing to people’s capacity to think, and research suggesting advanced AI could pose a risk of human extinction.<br>Boyle is an outlier, and knows it. She no longer owns a smartphone, has deleted her social media accounts and now lives in a converted Toyota 4WD.<br>The AFL’s refusal to allow Boyle a choice is not unlawful. Employers in Australia can install software on the equipment they own, are exempt from privacy law when handling employee records, and generally own whatever their staff produce. Most workers accept AI at work, or accept that they have no realistic way to avoid it.<br>Boyle’s case, illustrating how far someone has to go if they really don’t want to use the technology, is also early test of a new feature of many Australian workplaces.
Advertisement
As employers embed AI into the systems their staff use daily, often at short notice and with no option to decline, the law has not caught up. In a recent survey of Australian Services Union members, who often work in clerical roles, more than half were not aware their employer had an AI policy at all.<br>Boyle’s departure caps a four-month exchange with the AFL, documented in emails seen by this masthead, that began with an internal staff survey.
About 35 per cent of AFL staff said in a survey last year that they were not comfortable with AI being adopted in the workplace.GettyAbout 35 per cent of AFL staff said in a survey last year that they were not comfortable with AI being adopted in the workplace.<br>Boyle raised her concerns at an executive roadshow when the leadership team, including chief executive Andrew Dillon, visited Coffs Harbour on March 5. She asked what the AFL’s position on AI was and whether a policy would arrive to protect data and jobs.
Advertisement
Bec Haagsma, the AFL’s executive general manager customer, commercial and technology, fielded the question and spoke positively about AI’s potential to improve both the elite game and the AFL’s administration. Boyle says about eight colleagues thanked her for speaking up when she got back to the office.
Rebecca Haagsma, the AFL’s executive general manager customer, commercial and technology.AFRShe followed up in writing to Haagsma, setting out research on AI’s labour market and extinction risks and asking the league to pause its adoption.<br>Meanwhile, on March 16, Boyle emailed to report that a trainee planned to tidy up a list of registered AFL program participants by putting it through an AI tool. The list held children’s personal details, drawn from PlayHQ, the platform community clubs use to register players. No AI policy existed at the time.<br>“Sharing detailed personal information of our registered participants to third-party AI companies seems like it would be in breach of their privacy,” she wrote.
Advertisement
The AFL’s AI policy was released that day. It bars uploading personal or confidential information into unapproved tools, sets rules for AI meeting transcription and lists endorsed products including ChatGPT, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Salesforce Agentforce, Cursor and Claude Code. Its stated aspiration is to “embrace AI to elevate our people’s performance and impact”.<br>A footnote records that the policy was written with the assistance of generative AI.<br>Haagsma replied to Boyle’s broader concerns the following day, saying the AFL had to do more to share its plans transparently. She invited Boyle to join an AI community of interest that was about to launch.<br>Boyle says that group never eventuated.<br>The organisation’s first national AI training session came on April 21 with more than 300 staff joining a call titled Making Sense of AI, run by an external provider. Boyle says the facilitator told staff to give their AI assistants human names, rejecting suggestions like “Chatty” as...