Politico editors said in a union arbitration hearing that its experiments in using artificial intelligence should not be held to the editorial standards in its contract, reports Andrew Deck of The Nieman Lab.
Deck reports, “The arbitration transcript offers new insight into how Politico management is defending itself against the Guild’s case. In particular, management argues that the experimental AI tools in question are not subject to Politico’s normal journalistic editorial standards.
“In his testimony supporting Politico management, deputy editor-in-chief Joe Schatz was asked if he would publish some of the error-filled output by Report Builder as articles on Politico.com.
“Schatz replied that ‘the information in here and the way it’s organized and the way it says it does not reflect reality, so in that sense, no.’
“He went on to argue that Report Builder sits ‘outside the newsroom,’ since Politico’s product and engineering teams built the tool and editorial workers don’t review its outputs. As a result, he said, the AI-generated reports should not be held to the newsroom’s editorial standards.”
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