USAMedia Companies Gannett The company, which owns hundreds of newspapers, revealed in an internal memo that it is launching a new project to add AI-generated bullet points to the beginning of journalists' articles.
According to an internal memo seen by The Verge, the AI feature, labeled "Bulletin," uses automated technology to generate summaries below headlines. A disclaimer is also included at the bottom of the article: "The bullet points at the top of this article were generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) and reviewed by reporters before publication. The rest of the article was not generated using AI." The memo is dated May 14 and states that participation is currently optional.
The summaries appear to have appeared online for some USA Today articles (Gannett owns the USA Today newspaper). The memo says the AI-generated summaries are “designed to enhance the reporting process and improve the audience experience,” and notes that the AI model powering the tool was trained in-house over a nine-month period.
Last year, Gannett experimented with AI content, but quickly pulled its AI-generated sports coverage due to embarrassing writing. Also last October, employees at Gannett’s consumer products site Reviewed claimed that content on the site was generated by AI. As I reported last year, the work was produced by a third-party marketing company that was also behind the Sports Illustrated AI controversy and was then credited with AI-generated writing. At the time, Gannett insisted that product reviews were not generated using AI tools.
The addition of AI-generated summaries comes as local union members raise concerns about contract language that uses AI. According to Digiday, union workers at the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, New York, were shocked to discover during negotiations that a clause had been added to their contract: “Artificial intelligence (AI) may be used to generate news content.” AI-generated summaries on news articles are similar to what is happening on search platforms: At its Google I/O developer conference this week, the tech giant revealed how AI will become part of search, including various ways to add AI answers to the top of the results page. Even TikTok is experimenting with AI-generated “summaries” on the search results page. Placing answers trained on human-created content above actual websites and links can have a detrimental effect on publishers and their traffic, as users won’t continue to view the original material after reading the AI summary.
Gannett spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton did not respond to The Verge’s questions about whether the AI summaries might discourage readers from reading the actual content.