'The New York Times' Tests AI's Headline-Writing Capability: Report
- by Ray Schultz , July 11, 2024
The New York Times -- which is fighting OpenAI and Microsoft in court, attempting to block use of its content for training models -- is not beyond testing AI to write headlines and enforce its style guide, according to The Intercept.
The Times has developed a tool that would use OpenAI to perform those tasks, The Intercept continues.
A Times spokesperson acknowledged the effort, but said it was temporary.
“The project you’re referring to was a very early experiment by our engineering team designed to understand generative A.I. and its potential use cases,” said Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander, according to The Intercept. “In this case, the experiment was not taken beyond testing, and was not used by the newsroom. We continue to experiment with potential applications of A.I. for the benefit of our journalists and audience.”
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This is happening as the Times fights efforts by OpenAI to obtain its news sources as part of discovery. Presumably, OpenAI seeks to call Times copyrights into question, but the Times see it as a threat to its journalistic process.
Last year, the Times announced it had hired Zach Steward as its first editorial director of AI initiatives. In one of his first tasks, Steward was to work with newsroom leadership to establish principles for how to use and not use generative AI.
Some publishers have taken an anti-AI stance in their newsroom rules.
For instance, The Guardian states that “AI systems should not be used to generate text or images intended to be directly inserted into published journalism outside of exceptional and specific circumstances. Any exceptional use must be explicitly approved by the relevant senior duty editor and must be clearly signaled to readers on the article itself.”
Similarly, Associated Press has prohibited use of AI to create publishable content and images for AP.
