How to Overcome Four AI Risks in Proposal Writing Now

While AI has been incredibly helpful in expediting proposal management and writing tasks, it also carries risks. In Lohfeld Consulting’s recent LinkedIn poll of 275 bid and proposal professionals, we asked, “What concerns you most about using AI for proposal writing?” Here is how they answered:

• 42% – AI Hallucination
• 33% – AI Speak
• 17% – AI Security
• 8% – AI Bias

These numbers underscore a clear message: proposal teams want the efficiency of AI but fear losing control, accuracy, and credibility. This blog provides guidance for mitigating these risks so you can use AI with confidence.

Why These Four AI Risks Matter

While AI can accelerate proposal development, it introduces vulnerabilities that undermine compliance, clarity, and evaluator trust.

• AI Hallucination can create factually incorrect text that threatens your compliance and credibility.
• AI Speak can create vague, generic, “professional-sounding drivel” that can obscure strengths, overexplain solutions, and reduce proposal scores.
• AI Security failures can expose sensitive pricing, customer information, teammates’ proprietary data, and past proposals.
• AI Bias can make you “drink your own bathwater,” and support false conclusions.

Because these risks appear in the final product evaluators see, controlling them must be a disciplined part of modern proposal operations. In addition, proposal writers and managers should consider AI ethics and the government’s use of AI detection tools that can sense how you use AI to construct proposals.

Fear of AI Hallucination (42%)

AI hallucination is the creation of incorrect/untrue statements, which can render a proposal non-compliant or misleading. Because evaluators score accuracy, feasibility, proof, and relevance, hallucinations are dangerous. Here are some practical steps to prevent AI hallucination:

• Feed AI Verifiable Inputs: AI hallucinates most when it must “fill gaps.” So, provide RFP instructions, evaluation criteria, a compliance matrix, content plans, and other information in your prompts. If you don’t provide facts, AI will invent them.
• Require AI to Cite Source Inputs: Prompt the tool to reference the material you fed it: “Identify the source for every fact you present and flag any information you cannot confirm from the provided documents.” This immediately surfaces hallucinated content for human review.
• Prohibit AI from Making Up Metrics or Credentials: Include prompts such as, “do NOT fabricate statistics, credentials, compliance statements, or past performance details. If unknown, say (information not provided).”
• Create a Human Verification Loop: Have a subject-matter expert or proposal lead fact-check content while an editor confirms consistency and compliance.
• Use AI for Its Intended Purpose: AI is your proposal management and writing assistant. Use it to draft outlines, rephrase text, or improve readability. Do not use it to generate solutions and evidence.

AI Speak (33%)

Lohfeld Consulting coined the term “AI Speak” to define language that sounds technical, trendy, and intelligent—but fails to communicate anything concrete, customer-focused, or differentiated. AI Speak is one of the most common reasons proposal evaluators lose confidence in your submission. Examples include:

• “Comprehensive strategic synergy solutions…”
• “We leverage cutting-edge methodologies to drive innovation…”
• “Our team is uniquely positioned to deliver unparalleled excellence…”

Here are eight ways to eliminate AI Speak:

• Improve AI Prompt Quality: Give the AI tool specific guidance on the audience, tone, key messages, proof points, and stories so it generates content that is specific—not generic.
• Cross-check RFP Responsiveness: Tie every section back to an RFP requirement or evaluation factor to ensure the writing is precise, relevant, and free of generic language.
• Eliminate Filler: Remove buzzwords and fluff phrases that don’t add meaning.
• Take the “Read Aloud” Test: Read the text out loud to quickly remove robotic phrasing, formal language, and lack of human context.
• Add Human Fingerprints: Add stories, metrics, evidence, and lessons learned that only your team can provide.
• Vary Sentence Structure: Mix short, punchy sentences with longer, more complex ones to create a rhythm that keeps readers engaged. Also, add calls to action and attention grabbers.
• Conduct a Strength-based Review: Review your content against the RFP’s evaluation criteria to verify you have one or more strengths against all evaluated criteria.
• Edit for Voice and Clarity: Apply a consistent, human editorial voice to refine phrasing and tighten sentence structure.

AI Security Risks (17%)

Proposal teams handle sensitive information, including labor categories, indirect rate structures, teaming agreements, staffing approaches, and proprietary past performance data. AI systems must be treated like any other IT service and protected through policies, access controls, governance, and automation. Lohfeld Consulting suggests that every proposal manager work with their corporate Cybersecurity Officer (CSO) to develop a plan to mitigate AI security risks. Talking points to bring to the meeting include the following:

• Establish a Protected “AI Proposal Zone”: Learn how you can create a secure environment for AI tools to operate with role-based access to the minimal content required to perform tasks. Discuss how to restrict access to live cost models, salary databases, or proprietary financials, and explore how to partition proposal content libraries so users only access what relates to their work. Identify all AI tools operating within your “AI Proposal Zone,” and ensure they are not learning on your company data.
• Use Enterprise AI Tools, Not Public Chatbots: Since public models train on user inputs (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, GovCloud-compliant instances, or approved internal AI systems), work with your CSO to identify them and configure them for zero-retention data settings. Also discuss how you can enable encryption at rest and in transit, use audit logs, and verify compliance with your company’s cybersecurity controls.
• Train Staff to Recognize High-Risk Inputs: Ask the CSO to provide the proposal organization with training about uploading graphics or text containing proprietary data, cutting and pasting proprietary information, and allowing systems to analyze your proposal library. 
• Document Your AI Security Policy in the Proposal Plan: Ask your CSO to help produce a one-page “AI Use and Security” section in the proposal plan that clarifies approved tools, restricted data types, required human review, and version-control requirements.

Addressing AI Bias (8%)

Although only 8% of poll respondents selected AI Bias, the concern is no less valid because this risk can quietly undermine your competitiveness. AI Bias occurs when a model trained on your company’s own proposals, solutions, language, or historical content begins to mirror your internal assumptions. This occurs even when those assumptions are outdated, unverified, or not aligned with the customer’s actual needs. Over time, AI can reinforce your corporate “echo chamber,” amplifying your preferred approaches, overstating your capabilities, ignoring weaknesses, and recycling past solutions that may no longer be viable. Practical steps to reduce AI bias include the following:

• Use Bias-Guardrails in Prompts: Instruct AI to challenge assumptions by comparing your solution against competing approaches to surface blind spots and avoid internal echo chamber thinking.
• Ask AI to Perform Bias Checks on Draft Sections: Prompt the tool to identify places where the writing overclaims capabilities, lacks external validation, or relies too heavily on internal language, past solutions, or unverified assumptions.
• Perform SME-Led Bias Checks: Have your proposal SME check the content for company bias.
• Inject External Evidence: Provide AI with independent data (benchmarks, regulatory references, industry standards, competitive insights) so it can base its recommendations on real-world context rather than just your internal content library.
• Contrast Internal and External Perspectives: Periodically ask AI, “How would a competitor describe this requirement?” or, “What risks might the customer see in our proposed approach?” to force the model to evaluate your draft from multiple angles.

By actively countering AI bias, proposal teams gain clearer insight into where their solutions genuinely stand and reduce the risk of unintentionally overstating capabilities or misaligning with customer requirements.

Conclusion: AI Risks in Proposal Writing Must Be Managed, Not Feared

The LinkedIn poll made one thing clear: proposal professionals want to use AI, but they want to ensure that they’re using it safely. By addressing the four main risks: AI Security, AI Hallucination, AI Bias, and AI Speak, proposal teams can turn AI from a liability into a competitive advantage.

If you want to learn how to use AI more effectively, consider engaging one of our AI-trained capture or proposal consultants or taking our GenAI for Proposal Professionals class. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Relevant Information

• How to Secure Proposal Assets in the Age of Agentic AI

• How AI Tools Can Transform Proposal Management Now

• Spotting “AI Speak” in Proposals — and Why It Matters

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By Brenda Crist, Vice President at Lohfeld Consulting Group, MPA, CPP APMP Fellow

Lohfeld Consulting Group has proven results specializing in helping companies create winning captures and proposals. As the premier capture and proposal services consulting firm focused exclusively on government markets, we provide expert assistance to government contractors in Capture Planning and Strategy, Proposal Management and Writing, Capture and Proposal Process and Infrastructure, and Training. In the last 3 years, we’ve supported over 550 proposals winning more than $170B for our clients—including the Top 10 government contractors. Lohfeld Consulting Group is your “go-to” capture and proposal source! Start winning by contacting us at www.lohfeldconsulting.com and join us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube^(TM).