The New York Times allows employees to use AI
The New York Times has allowed its editorial and product teams to use artificial intelligence tools, reports Semafor. The publication announced the launch of its own AI tool Echo for creating content summaries and presented employees with a set of approved AI products.
According to internal communications, editorial staff can use AI to suggest edits, formulate interview questions, and assist with research. Clear restrictions have been established: it is forbidden to use AI for writing or substantially revising articles, as well as inputting confidential source information.
Among the approved tools are: GitHub Copilot for programming, Google’s Vertex AI for product development, NotebookLM, some Amazon AI products, and OpenAI’s API (excluding ChatGPT) through a business account. In the future, the publication is considering using AI to create voiced versions of articles and translations into other languages.
Notably, the decision to use AI tools was made against the backdrop of ongoing litigation between The New York Times and companies OpenAI and Microsoft. The publication accuses them of copyright infringement in training generative AI models on their content.
In the future, AI tools may be used to create social media texts, SEO headlines, and program code. This decision reflects the growing trend of AI integration into journalistic work while maintaining control over key editorial processes.
