While not every use of AI in the newsroom is as blatant as an AI just drafting a post onto a blank page (although that happens too,) it’s important to know just how the sausage is being made when it comes to the information that’s shaping your worldviews.
Earlier this week, Semafor published an article about new AI tools that New York Times management is reportedly encouraging staffers to try. While the publication’s legal arm is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, it appears the site’s editorial and product wings are ready to embrace AI in the newsroom, at least going by communication from the top.
Not all of these will be used for the website’s articles—the New York Times is bigger than what you see on its front page—but Semafor did say that journalists are being encouraged to “use these AI tools” for tasks like mild content revisions or coming up with questions to ask during interviews.
To that end, there are seemingly still some guardrails still in place. Semafor says the NYT has warned staff not to use AI to draft or significantly revise articles, and has noted that AI use could potentially infringe on copyright or unintentionally expose sources.
For the journalists’ part, Semafor reports that some remain skeptical, worrying that AI in the newsroom could inspire “laziness” and reduce accuracy or creativity.
Quartz
With that said, G/O Media has since then become a major proponent of AI in the newsroom, with business news outlet Quartz being its biggest experiment in this.
To Quartz’ credit, it does not hide that these stories are AI-generated and the AI cites its sources, but it doesn’t appear as if there’s human oversight addressing any problems that might arise from this.
With that, it’s very likely you might find this story hoping for useful advice, only to leave disappointed and more confused than when you came. But the chances of that only get higher if you land on another story with a less reliable source than TechCrunch.
G/O is slapping a disclaimer on all AI-generated Quartz stories that says it's in the “first phase of an experimental new version of reporting,” but with AI efforts at the company going back to 2023, it’s unclear if it’ll ever figure out what that experiment is supposed to yield.
If the New York Times is just starting to dip its toes into AI, and Quartz has done a full-on cannonball, then the AP’s use of AI seems to be somewhere in between. On its site, the agency proudly declares that it uses AI for translation, transcription, headlines, research, and even some automated articles, but general blogs are still left to human hands.
Where this will most likely affect you is in the site’s use of Wordsmith, an AI program that specializes in summarizing content like sports scores, weather reports, and, as with Quartz, earnings. AP has been using a version of this program since 2014, so it’s not exactly new, but it’s worth being aware that stories on these topics without a specific author attached likely came from a bot. But aside from these stories, AP’s only other clear use of directly AI-written content was an experiment with reporting public safety incidents in a specific Minnesota newspaper.
Again, headlines and research are still admittedly AI-assisted, so it’s important to be extra careful when something doesn’t pass your sniff test, but it seems like humans are still taking the forefront here, at least for now.
The Washington Post
“Answers are AI-generated from published reporting,” warns the bot when you ask a question. “Please verify by consulting the provided articles.”
Washington Post hasn’t been clear about which AI tech powers Ask the Post AI, but in general, it won’t bother you unless you go looking for it. Based on the prevalent warnings about its use, it seems to be intended more as a place to start research than as a direct news replacement.
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