Generative AI Policy

Much has been made of the newest generation of Generative AI tools – artificial intelligence trained to write, summarize and create. At CityBeat, we’ve been experimenting internally with AI tools like ChatGPT to see if they can help us be more efficient or effective. 

What we’ve found is that generative AI is good for some tasks, but terrible at reporting. AI can’t talk to sources, it can’t analyze complex human behavior, and it can’t observe and report on the non-verbal communication that happens in interviews and meetings. In other words, it isn’t going to replace reporters. However, we will be using generative AI in certain circumstances, and we wanted to be sure we were clear about what those were, and where we absolutely WON’T be using AI. 

We also understand that the technology is evolving, and as it does, we will update this policy. 

Text Generators (e.g ChatGPT)

We do not publish stories with text generated by AI. Our stories are written by humans, in their totality. We do not use AI to write whole stories or to create snippets of writing to include in stories. Our reporters are paid to write original, compelling stories. AI writing is dull, unoriginal and prone to errors and bias, as well as plagiarism. 

We do not publish text edited by AI. Part of being a robust newsroom means that we employ humans who edit every single article we publish. Every article published on CityBeat.com goes through two rounds of human editing, and every article published in our print newspaper goes through at least four rounds of human editing. The humans editing our work understand the community, the history, and the relevance of our work in a way that AI cannot. 

We may use AI to suggest headlines. Headline writing is both an art and a science. In the olden days, space constraints in print publications meant that headlines had to be informative AND fit the space available. In our digital age, headlines have to be informative AND work for search engines. It isn’t easy, and sometimes AI can help us find the right words that will summarize a story and also make sure folks can find it on the internet. All headline suggestions will be read and approved by human editors, however, who understand the story, the context and the relevance. 

We may use AI to suggest text for short social media posts.  As with headlines, social media posts, or blurbs, affect how those sites place our stores in the algorithm. Those algorithms change constantly, and AI is able to keep up with those changes in real time, helping our stories reach a broader audience. All AI-suggested social media blurbs will be edited and approved by real humans. 

We may use AI to suggest text for email newsletters. All our email newsletters contain summaries of the stories we’re including that day. Writing those summaries is a time-consuming task for our editors, and we may experiment with having an AI tool suggest those summaries. All summaries will be edited and approved by human editors who have read the stories and understand them. 

We may use AI to help generate story ideas. Brainstorming is a complex process, and using a tool that can assist with the brainstorming process doesn’t seem terrible to us. An idea dump is just that – all of us, and maybe some AI tools, producing a whole bunch of ideas for our human team to go through and decide what is relevant and interesting. In our experience, about 90% of the ideas generated by AI are not interesting or relevant, but the remaining 10% make it worth trying. 

Image Generators (e.g. Dall-E, etc.)

We may publish AI-generated images or video, but only under certain conditions. At CityBeat, we don’t use many photo illustrations or otherwise “created” artwork, so we don’t employ visual artists on staff. Rarely, we will outsource the creation of a photo illustration, or we may experiment with using AI to create those images, but not if it blatantly imitates existing work or infringes copyright. In such cases, we will disclose the fact that generative AI was used
We specifically do not use AI-generated images instead of stock photography. CityBeathas several photographers we work with on a regular basis, as well as having our own reporters take photos when they are at events. In the event we can’t use our own photographers for images, we are members of the Associated Press, and take many of our non-staff photography from their paid archives. We will also use companies like Unsplash to find stock photography, because we understand that selling images to stock archives is how many working photographers make ends meet.

Partner content

All content published on CityBeat — including material from our content-sharing partners — is held to the same standards outlined in our generative AI policy.

To ensure this alignment, we engage in ongoing conversations with editorial leaders at each partner newsroom about how they are using AI in their reporting and production workflows. As of now, their internal policies align with ours, and we will continue these check-ins as technology and practices evolve.