Gannett, the media company that owns hundreds of newspapers in the US, is launching a new program 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 “Gist” of an article, uses automated technology to create summaries that appear below the headline. At the bottom of the article, there is a disclaimer that reads, “The gist at the top of this article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) and was reviewed by a journalist prior to publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI.” The memo, dated May 14, states that participation is voluntary at this time.
The summaries appear to have already been published online in USA Today articles. (The USA Today newspaper is owned by Gannett.) The AI-generated summaries are “intended to enhance the reporting process and improve the reader experience,” according to the memo, which also notes that the AI model powering the tool was trained in-house over a nine-month period.
“This document speaks for itself,” Gannett spokeswoman Lark Marie Anton said in an email.
Gannett has experimented with AI content before, in incidents it quickly retracted after embarrassing gaffes. Last August, Gannett stopped publishing AI-generated sports recap articles after readers mocked the awkward writing. In October, staff at the company’s consumer product site Reviewed claimed that content published online was created using AI. As I reported last year, the third-party marketing firm that produced that article was also behind Sports Illustrated’s AI controversy, where AI-generated authors were credited as writers. At the time, Gannett maintained that its product reviews were not created with AI tools.
The addition of AI-generated summaries comes after local union members raised concerns about proposed contract language regarding the use of AI. According to Digiday, union members at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York, were surprised during negotiations to see a clause added to their contract stating that “artificial intelligence (AI) may be used to generate news content.”
AI-generated summaries of news articles mirror what’s happening on search platforms. At its Google I/O developer conference this week, the tech giant announced all the ways AI will be part of search, including adding AI answers to the top of search result pages. Even TikTok is experimenting with AI-generated “summaries” on its search result pages. The possibility of AI answers trained on human-created content ranking higher than actual websites and links could have a negative impact on publishers and their traffic, as users will drop off after reading the AI summary rather than continue on to the source material.
Anton did not respond to questions from The Verge about whether AI summaries could discourage readers from reading the actual articles.