This article is for Disclosers and provides guidance on how to use the new, optional, AI-assisted Response suggestions feature to generate draft responses for selected questions using uploaded reference documents.
Note: The feature is being released through a phased rollout and will not be available to all Disclosers at the response window opening. Please see the Availability and supported questions section for more information.
Contents
About response suggestions
Response suggestions is an optional feature that helps Disclosers draft responses more efficiently by identifying relevant information and supporting evidence for select CDP questions in uploaded reference documents. The feature uses technology developed in partnership with Briink to identify, extract, and map relevant information from uploaded documents to select CDP questions. For supported questions, the feature provides:
A suggested response.
An explanation of how the suggestion was generated, including supporting evidence and source references from uploaded documents.
If applicable, an indication of what the feature was not able to find in your uploaded documents, as compared to CDP's published best practice.
Note: This feature is intended to support, not replace, human judgement. All AI-suggested responses should be reviewed, validated, and edited as necessary before being included in a questionnaire response.
Availability and supported questions
The Response suggestions feature is being released through a phased rollout to support a high-quality and responsible launch.
At the opening of the 2026 response window, the feature is available only to organizations that paid the Enhanced admin fee in 2025. Subject to platform performance and operational readiness, access will be expanded to additional Disclosers during the response window. Disclosers will be notified by CDP when the feature is available to their organization.
The Response suggestions feature will only be available for select questions within the Full Corporate questionnaire to start. This means that other questionnaire versions (SME, States and Regions, etc.) will not be initially supported by the feature. If a question does not support the feature, the ‘Suggested Response’ panel will not appear.
Step 1: Before you begin
Before generating optional AI-suggested responses:
Ensure yourquestionnaire setup is complete.
Ensure you are the Discloser Submission Lead. Please refer to theConfirm the Submission Lead section of our ‘Onboarding steps for Discloser’ article. You may also find ourChange the Lead section of our ‘Discloser roles and managing team members’ article useful. Only the Submission Lead can manage reference documents, generate and view AI-suggested responses in the Portal.
Gather all documents relevant to your disclosure, noting:
A maximum of 25 files can be uploaded.
Files must not exceed 120 MB each.
Supported file formats include:
PDF
DOC / DOCX
XLS / XLSX / XSLM
PPT / PPTX
CSV
XML
Documents can be input in 80+ supported languages.
CDP recommends prioritizing annual reports, sustainability reports, and integrated reports.
If you disclosed in 2025, the feature will automatically consider your 2025 response to generate a response in the same style. You may wish to upload a copy of your 2025 disclosure as part of your Response suggestions documents.
For a demonstration of the Response suggestions feature, please refer to our 2026 Feature Demo video.
Note: If you resubmit your questionnaire setup at any time, the questions displayed in your questionnaire may change due to the CDP-ACS and environmental issues changes, but your suggested responses will not change.
Step 2: Upload documents
When you log in to your organization’s CDP Portal, you may see a new ‘AI-suggested responses’ tile on the homepage.
To upload your documents for the Responses suggestions feature:
Select the ‘Upload documents >’ button within the ‘AI-suggested responses’ tile to open the ‘RESPONSE SUGGESTIONS’ tab in your settings. Alternatively, if this does not appear in your homepage, select ‘Settings’ from the expandable sidebar on the left and then switch to the ‘RESPONSE SUGGESTIONS’ tab.
Peruse sections in the tab related to:
How the feature works.
Terms and Conditions.
Document management.
Language selection settings used when generating suggestions.
Navigate to the ‘Documents’ section and upload the relevant documents. Remember that only the Submission Lead can upload and manage documents. Discloser Contributors will still be able to view this feature, but all buttons and functions will be disabled (greyed-out) for them.
Select the language in which you would like AI-suggested responses to be generated. We recommend selecting the same language used throughout your questionnaire response.
Note: At response window opening, the only output language is English but inputted documents can be in 80+ supported languages. As the feature evolves, language outputs will eventually cover all CDP-supported languages (English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese).
Tip: CDP encourages the responsible use of AI technologies. Where possible, gather and upload all relevant documents before generating suggestions. We recommend you only use this feature once as this reduces the need to regenerate suggestions multiple times, thus reducing the environmental impact of the feature. This also helps improve the quality of the first responses generated.
Step 3: Generate your AI-suggested responses
After uploading your relevant documents and preferred language:
Navigate to your ‘Questionnaire’ page using the button in the left sidebar or the ‘Questionnaire KPI’ tile from your homepage.
On the right of the ‘Questionnaire’ landing page, an ‘AI-suggested responses’ tile will now display a ‘Generate suggested response’ button.
After selecting this button, suggestions are generated in the background. This may take 30 minutes or longer depending on:
The number of documents uploaded.
File sizes.
The relevance of uploaded content.
Current platform demand.
Once generation is complete, you’ll receive a notification displaying that the generation was successful. The ‘AI-suggested responses’ tile will also display a time-stamp when suggestions were last generated.
You can update reference documents at any time before submission. If documents are added or removed, suggestions will be marked as out of date and should be regenerated to reflect the latest available information.
Step 4: Review the suggestions in your questionnaire
After generating the AI-suggested responses, suggested responses will be available for select questionnaire questions and modules. More information on availability can be found in the Availability section above.
Navigate to a question that displays a ‘Suggested Response’ button in the lower-left corner.
Note: If you are a returning Discloser, some questions may already contain pre-filled information from your previous year’s disclosure. To learn more about this and ensure all relevant information is carried over from your previous response, please see our CDP onboarding steps for Disclosers article. Response suggestions can still be generated for these questions.
Selecting the ‘Suggested response’ button opens the ‘Response suggestion’ panel, which displays:
A suggested response.
Supporting evidence.
Source references.
An explanation of why the suggestion was generated.
Additional insights taken from best practices in CDP's reporting guidance.
Note: Every suggestion includes references to the documents used. These are displayed with circled numbers and allow users to trace back to the original evidence before deciding whether to use it or not.
If you wish to use any of the free text suggested content:
Copy the suggested response using the ‘Copy’ button and paste it into the questionnaire response field. You may find theEditing fields in the questionnaire section of our ‘Navigating and completing the CDP questionnaire in the Portal’ article useful.
Review and edit the content as necessary.
Confirm that the final response accurately reflects your organization's disclosure. Review our article on Navigating and completing the questionnaire in the Portal if you need further guidance.
Note: The response suggestion generated will also include recommendations for drop-down options of a select question (Header sub-question). You will need to navigate back to the question and select this manually if you wish to use this suggestion.
Important: AI-generated content should always be reviewed before final response submission.
Data use and security
Your control
The ‘Response suggestions’ feature uses AI technology, developed in partnership with Briink, to enable disclosers to upload and extract information relevant to their CDP disclosure from their existing documents. Please see the About section for more information on the feature.
The feature is designed to support, not replace, human judgment. Discloser Submission Leads control which documents are uploaded and can update or delete reference documents at any time. The feature does not use reference documents other than those provided by the Discloser Submission Lead.
As AI-suggested content may contain inaccuracies, omissions, or outdated information, the Discloser Submission Lead remains responsible for:
Reviewing generated content.
Validating supporting evidence.
Editing responses where required.
Approving all content before submission.
Data security
All user data is processed and stored exclusively on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure located in Europe with encrypted backups maintained in separate European regions for resilience. All documents are stored fully encrypted and are processed within secure infrastructure, separately from other organizations' documents. Only the reporting organization can access their AI-suggested responses.
User data can only be accessed by designated members of the engineering team for maintenance and assurance purposes. User data is never used to train Briink’s model and is not available to or usable by other disclosers or third parties.
Environmental considerations
Briink and CDP take the environmental impact of AI seriously. Briink’s system runs on a low-carbon data center and they have policies in place to measure and optimize the environmental footprint of their infrastructure. Briink continues to develop approaches for providing greater transparency around AI-related environmental impacts to users.
Troubleshooting
No suggested response available
If the system cannot identify sufficient evidence within uploaded documents, you may see the following message: “There wasn’t enough evidence in your documents to answer this question.”
This does not necessarily indicate a problem with the feature. It means the system could not identify sufficient supporting information within the uploaded documents to generate a response with confidence.
In the cases, you can:
Complete the response manually.
Upload additional supporting documents.
Regenerate suggestions.
Unable to generate suggestions
If you encounter an "Unable to run" error message:
Please ensure:
You have the Discloser Submission Lead role.
Existing generation requests have completed.
You are not repeatedly generating suggestions within a short period.
Generating a large number of requests simultaneously may affect performance.
Suggestions appear inaccurate
Review the uploaded reference documents, including the sources linked in the 'Explanation' section of the AI-generated response.
Confirm that the relevant information exists within those documents.
Update or replace documents if necessary.
Regenerate suggestions.
Contact Support
If you continue to experience issues after the following the guidance above, please contact CDP Support using the 'Contact Support' button at the end of this article. If you are raising this case directly through the My Support page in the Help Center please select the category ‘CDP Portal – System Support’ and subcategory ‘AI Response Suggestion Issues’ to ensure it goes to the right team.
For any guidance on raising a support case or creating a Help Center account, please refer to our How to raise a case in the CDP Help Center article.
You may also find the following articles helpful: