NewsGuild launches campaign to challenge AI-driven content
Union wraps up ‘News Not Slop’ action week with town hall
Unionized journalists across the United States launched a new initiative aimed at confronting the rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence in newsrooms.
In a week of action dubbed “News Not Slop” that included an online town hall Thursday night, NewsGuild-CWA urged journalists and the public to join them in opposing AI-driven content.
NewsGuild describes its new campaign as “a reference to the term for low-quality, surface-level digital content generated by AI.”
There isn’t really a good way to reduce bias in AI tools. The idea that you’re going to have a generative AI that’s
explained data journalist Meredith Broussard at the online AI Town Hall. She is also a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology.good
is a fantasy. Generative AI will get better, but it’s never going to get good,
Her advice? Don’t use generative AI for anything customer-facing. Don’t use it for anything that requires accuracy.
NewsGuild represents 27,000 members across North America at major media companies including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Business Insider, POLITICO, ProPublica, and more. The NewsGuild-CWA said the effort is designed to raise awareness about AI and its consequences, and how unionized journalists are fighting to ensure that journalism is led by humans.
The push comes as the union highlights a recent arbitration victory against POLITICO, where — according to the release — the company’s introduction of AI content tools undermined core journalistic standards.
The concerns goes beyond just standards and accuracy.
Readers don’t want to read AI summaries. They’re tedious, deeply mediocre, and inaccurate,
Broussard said. When you send an AI-generated report to a colleague, it makes your colleague think you’re dumb.
Meanwhile, tech journalist Brian Merchant, who also spoke at the AI Town Hall, asserted that some of the worst, most egregious AI experiments come from outlets under the most economic pressure. When new technology comes along, management embraces it for one reason: they think it can reduce labor costs.
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The Guild’s Demands for Ethical AI in Journalism outline what journalists need to protect their jobs and the quality of their work.
AI is a tool that can support our work, but there is no AI function, no matter how advanced, that can replace a human’s ability, our ability, to fully consider journalism’s ethical implications, to relate with a story’s subjects through lived experience or to approach an investigation with thoughtfulness and integrity,
said Mark Olalde, environment journalist at ProPublica and a member of the ProPublica Guild bargaining committee, said in a press release ahead of the action week.
The launch coincides with an AI Week of Action,
featuring social-media outreach, a public petition, informational fliers, rallies, and a town hall with experienced journalists speaking about the risks of unregulated AI use.
Guild president Jon Schleuss emphasized the stakes. The good news: Across our union, we’ve won strong contract language that protects jobs and erects guardrails to protect the integrity of our members’ work,
he said, in the press release. It’s through this Week of AI Action that we’ll keep that momentum going and win strong protections in every shop to ensure there’s always a human behind the journalism.
NewsGuild AI bargaining demands
The NewsGuild-CWA has laid out a list of demand its unions use in bargaining around AI.
The NewsGuild-CWA represents 27,000 members across North America. Our members are deeply concerned that employers are using tools from for-profit companies to implement artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that damage the credibility of the news industry. We’re bargaining for and winning protections around AI so readers can trust the news they read.
The following is a summary of those demands.
AI for assistance, not for original work creation.
- Technology, including AI should remain a supplement to human work.
- AI should not be used to write and publish articles without human oversight.
- Journalists must have the final say in published work.
No layoffs. No salary reductions.
- Prioritize work created by humans and protect against layoffs and salary reductions.
- Recognize that people in our communities deserve the dignity of coverage by human beings
Transparency is fundamental to our work.
- Any published AI-generated content must be identifiable as AI-generated content.
- AI material needs to be clearly labeled so readers are not confused.
No training on our work or our likeness without our permission.
- Protect human creators likeness, voice, and image from third-party AI companies.
- AI companies should not use journalist or creators likeness for training or the creation of a digital replica.
Journalists in control, not executives.
- Executives should stay out of decisions about AI used in newsrooms.
Beth McCowen is a freelance journalist who specializes in women’s health and sport. Her work seeks to alter how individual journalists and the media as a whole approach and raise awareness of issues.
This is news. This article uses interviews with people whose experiences, lives, or expertise are relevant to a topic along with facts and research to tell a story about an issue.
