- Summary: The New York Times is integrating AI tools into its newsroom and product development processes, providing training and access to various AI platforms for staff use in tasks ranging from SEO optimization to code generation. This move comes amidst a legal battle with OpenAI over copyright infringement, highlighting the complex relationship between the Times and the AI industry.
New York, NY – The New York Times is making a significant push into the world of artificial intelligence, announcing the rollout of internal AI tools for both its editorial and product teams. The company aims to leverage AI’s potential to enhance journalistic capabilities and improve accessibility for readers.
In internal communications, the Times revealed its plans to offer AI training to newsroom staff and introduced “Echo,” a new in-house AI summarization tool currently in beta. Alongside Echo, employees for product development, NotebookLM, the NYT’s ChatExplorer, select Amazon AI products, and OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API (through the New York Times’ business account, subject to legal department approval).
The company’s editorial guidelines emphasize the potential of generative AI to assist journalists in uncovering the truth and making information more accessible. They envision AI aiding in tasks such as generating SEO headlines, summaries, and audience promotions; suggesting edits; brainstorming ideas; conducting research; and analyzing internal documents and images. For example, staff were shown in training videos how AI could be used to formulate questions for a CEO interview. Other suggested uses include developing news quizzes, social media copy, quote cards, and FAQs.
The Times provided examples of prompts journalists could use with the AI tools:
- “How many times was Al mentioned in these episodes of Hard Fork?”
- “Can you revise this paragraph to make it tighter?”
- “Pretend you are posting this Times article to Facebook. How would you promote it?”
- “Summarize this Times article in a concise, conversational voice for a newsletter.”
- “Can you propose five search-optimized headlines for this Times article?”
- “Can you summarize this play written by Shakespeare?”
- “Can you summarize this federal government report in layman’s terms?”
Despite the enthusiasm, the Times is proceeding cautiously, acknowledging the risks associated with AI, including copyright infringement and potential exposure of confidential sources. Editorial staff are prohibited from using AI to draft or significantly revise articles, input copyrighted material (especially source information), circumvent paywalls, or publish machine-generated images or videos (except for demonstrational purposes with proper labeling). The company warns that improper use of unapproved AI tools could jeopardize source protection.
The Times has publicly posted its AI editorial guidelines and confirmed that it has been conducting internal pilot programs over the past year to explore AI’s applications within the newsroom.
This move comes as the Times is engaged in a legal dispute with OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement for training its models on Times content without permission. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has countered that the Times is hindering technological progress.
While the Times is embracing internal AI use, some employees have expressed concerns. They worry that reliance on AI could lead to laziness, uncreative output, and the generation of inaccurate information.
Tensions also exist between some staff and AI companies. Some employees were reportedly upset when the CEO of Perplexity suggested replacing striking Times tech workers with AI tools last year, following a Semafor report about the strike.
