Yesterday morning, billionaire Los Angeles Occasions proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong published a letter to readers letting them know the outlet is now utilizing AI so as to add a “Voices” label to articles that take “a stance” or are “written from a private perspective.” He stated these articles might also get a set of AI-generated “Insights,” which seem on the backside as bullet factors, together with some labeled, “Completely different views on the subject.”
“Voices shouldn’t be strictly restricted to Opinion part content material,” writes Quickly-Shiong, ”It additionally contains information commentary, criticism, opinions, and extra. If a bit takes a stance or is written from a private perspective, it could be labeled Voices.“ He additionally says, “I consider offering extra diverse viewpoints helps our journalistic mission and can assist readers navigate the problems going through this nation.”
The information wasn’t obtained properly by LA Occasions union members. In a press release reported by The Hollywood Reporter, LA Occasions Guild vice chair Matt Hamilton stated the union helps some initiatives to assist readers separate information reporting from opinion tales, “However we don’t suppose this strategy — AI-generated evaluation unvetted by editorial workers — will do a lot to reinforce belief within the media.”
It’s solely been a day, however the change has already generated some questionable outcomes. The Guardian points to a March 1st LA Times opinion piece concerning the hazard inherent in unregulated use of AI to provide content material for historic documentaries. On the backside, the outlet’s new AI software claims that the story “typically aligns with a Middle Left perspective” and means that “AI democratizes historic storytelling.”
Insights had been additionally apparently added to the underside of a February 25th LA Times story about California cities that elected Klu Klux Klan members to their metropolis councils within the Nineteen Twenties. One of many now-removed, AI-generated, bullet-pointed views is that native historic accounts typically painted the Klan as “a product of ‘white Protestant tradition’ responding to societal modifications relatively than an explicitly hate-driven motion, minimizing its ideological risk.” That’s appropriate, because the writer points out on X, however it appears to be clumsily offered as a counterpoint to the story’s premise – that the Klan’s pale legacy in Anaheim, California has lived on at school segregation, anti-immigration legal guidelines, and native neo-Nazi bands.