AI in Brand Atlas — overview

Brand Atlas has two AI assistants. Oswald is the editorial assistant available on Guardian; it drafts Horizons, proposes Update Request responses, and reviews assets against the brand record. Henry is the read-only assistant available on Keeper and Guardian; it answers team questions about the brand record using a customer-supplied API key. The two serve different parts of the stewardship loop and are designed to complement each other rather than overlap.

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The headline comparison

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Why two assistants

The two-assistant split is deliberate. Editing the brand record is authorship work and belongs with the brand owner; reading the brand record is access work and is needed by every team member. Conflating the two would mean either giving editing capability to a broad team (against the principle of single accountable authorship) or restricting reading help to the brand owner (defeats the working-system case). So:

• Oswald is the editor’s assistant. It drafts; the brand owner decides; nothing changes the record without the brand owner’s explicit approval.
• Henry is the reader’s assistant. It explains, summarises, and surfaces what is already in the record. It cannot change anything.

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The cost model

Two different cost models, on purpose.

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Oswald

Oswald’s usage is covered by the Guardian-tier subscription. There is no per-message charge, no per-Horizon charge, no metered cost. Guardian customers can use Oswald as much as the work calls for, within a fair-use ceiling that no real-world usage has reached. Brand Atlas pays the underlying provider; the customer pays Brand Atlas the Guardian subscription. This makes the cost predictable, and it aligns Brand Atlas’s incentives with making Oswald useful.

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Henry

Henry’s usage is paid for by the customer directly to their chosen AI provider (OpenAI or Gemini). The customer supplies an API key; Henry uses it; the provider bills the customer at the provider’s usage rates. This is the Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) model. It keeps the Keeper subscription flat at $79/mo regardless of how heavily Henry is used, and it lets customers choose their preferred provider, manage their own usage caps, and pay at the provider’s wholesale rates. The trade-off: the customer is responsible for the AI provider bill. A team that uses Henry heavily will see a higher bill from OpenAI or Gemini than a team that uses it lightly. Most teams find the cost is small (typically tens of dollars a month for active use); some find it substantial.

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What the AI providers see

Both assistants send content to the underlying AI provider for the model to process. Important constraints:

• Both Oswald and Henry use API tiers with no training on customer data. OpenAI, Gemini, and the Oswald provider all offer enterprise API tiers that do not use API content for model training. Brand Atlas uses those tiers.
• Content is not retained beyond the session. Each interaction is a fresh request; no long-term retention on the provider side.
• For Henry, the customer’s relationship is direct with the provider. Brand Atlas does not see the AI provider’s logs.
• For Oswald, Brand Atlas mediates the relationship. Logs of Oswald activity are part of the brand record.

The full disclosure is in AI Usage & Disclosure Policy and BYOK / API Key Handling Policy.

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Naming conventions in the product

In user-facing copy in the product, the AI features are referred to as:

• Oswald. Always by name.
• Henry. Always by name.
• Brand Atlas AI. Umbrella term when referring to AI features generically.

The underlying AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and similar) are not named in user-facing product copy. They are named in the AI Usage & Disclosure Policy and the BYOK Policy. This is so that the AI assistants are recognisable as products of Brand Atlas, not as wrappers around someone else’s model.

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When to enable which

• Just Keeper, just Henry. A working team that wants AI assistance for reading and questioning the atlas. Most Keeper customers enable Henry within their first week.
• Just Guardian, just Oswald. A brand owner who wants editorial AI assistance but does not yet want team-side AI. Less common; usually a transitional state on the way to enabling both.
• Guardian, both Oswald and Henry. The default Guardian configuration. Brand owner uses Oswald to draft; team uses Henry to read; they meet in Update Requests.

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Related pages