The Scoop
The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code.
In messages to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool called Echo to staff, Semafor has learned. The Times also shared documents and videos laying out editorial do’s and don’t for using AI, and shared a suite of AI products that staff could now use to develop web products and editorial ideas.
“Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world. Machine learning already helps us report stories we couldn’t otherwise, and generative AI has the potential to bolster our journalistic capabilities even more,” the company’s editorial guidelines said.
“Likewise, the Times will become more accessible to more people through features like digitally voice[d] articles, translations into other languages, and uses of generative AI we have yet to discover. We view the technology not as some magical solution but as a powerful tool that, like many technological advances before, may be used in service of our mission.”
The company said it was approving a number of AI programs for editorial and product staff, including GitHub Copilot programming assistant for coding, Google’s Vertex AI for product development, NotebookLM, the NYT’s ChatExplorer, some Amazon AI products, and OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API through the New York Times’ business account (only with approval from the company’s legal department). The Times also announced it had built Echo, an in-house beta summarization tool to allow journalists to condense Times articles, briefings, and interactives.
The paper encouraged editorial staff to use these AI tools to generate SEO headlines, summaries, and audience promos; suggest edits; brainstorm questions and ideas and ask questions about reporters’ own documents; engage in research; and analyze the Times’ own documents and images. In a training video shared with staff, the Times suggested using AI to come up with questions to ask the CEO of a startup during an interview. Times guidelines also said it could use AI to develop news quizzes, social copy, quote cards, and FAQs.
In a series of training documents, editorial guidelines laid out possible use cases for journalists, including prompts such as:
- How many times was Al mentioned in these episodes of Hard Fork?
- Can you revise this paragraph to make it tighter?
- Pretend you are posting this Times article to Facebook. How would you promote it?
- Summarize this Times article in a concise, conversational voice for a newsletter.
- Can you propose five search-optimized headlines for this Times article?
- Can you summarize this play written by Shakespeare?
- Can you summarize this federal government report in layman’s terms?
Still, the company has bracketed its AI use, noting the potential risks for copyright infringement and exposure of sources.
The company told editorial staff they should not use AI to draft or significantly revise an article, input third party copyrighted materials (particularly confidential source information), use AI to circumvent a paywall, or publish machine-generated images or videos, except to demonstrate the technology and with proper labeling. The company said some unapproved AI tools, if used improperly, could waive the Times’ right to protect sources and notes.
The Times declined to comment, but noted that it posted its AI editorial guidelines publicly on its site. Over the past year, the paper has been working with a pilot group internally to explore how AI could be used within the newsroom.
The Times’ decision to begin using AI tools comes at a particularly notable moment for the company. It remains embroiled in a legal battle with OpenAI in court, alleging that the company trained its models on Times content without permission, amounting to massive copyright infringement. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, has said that the Times is attempting to stifle technological innovation.
Despite the Times’ enthusiasm for internal use of AI, some employees expressed skepticism. Speaking to staff over the weekend, some felt that their teams may not initially use AI for fear that it could inspire laziness or uncreative headlines or other outputs, and could generate inaccurate information that wasn’t useful. There also remains some animosity between major AI companies and employees. Some staff were irked when, responding to a Semafor report about a weekslong strike by Times tech employees last year, the CEO of the AI company Perplexity offered to replace striking workers with AI tools.