CNET overhauls AI policy and updates past stories

Tech news site CNET has updated its artificial intelligence policies, saying no stories will be written entirely using the AI tool, and it’s also updating some past content, reports Mia Sato of The Verge.

Sato reports, “But the outlet says it will ‘explore leveraging’ AI tools to sort and analyze data and to create outlines for stories, analyze existing text, and generate explanatory content. The in-house tool CNET is using is called Responsible AI Machine Partner, or RAMP, according to the memo.

“CNET has also gone back and updated the dozens of previously published stories generated using AI systems that triggered backlash in January. Of the more than 70 stories published over the course of several months, CNET eventually issued corrections on more than half. Some contained factual errors, while others were updated to replace ‘phrases that were not entirely original,’ suggesting they may have contained plagiarized material. S tories now include an editor’s note reading, ‘An earlier version of this article was assisted by an AI engine. This version has been substantially updated by a staff writer.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.