Journalism, communication, and even information as a whole, find themselves at an ethical crossroads with the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI). It’s becoming more difficult than ever for consumers of any content—news, literature, music, video—to truly know who (or what) is responsible for what they’re putting into their eyes, ears, and minds.
We do not believe AI should be used to create, for many reasons. Chief among them:
- The current available technology, while entertaining, has proven to be highly inaccurate at times, to the point of being unreliable.
- There are myriad unanswered legal and ethical questions about how generative AI creates content by plagiarizing copyrighted (and even non-copyrighted) original material.
- There are many unresolved questions about the potential for biases in AI-generated content.
We do believe AI has a place in some processes and tools, and we do employ it in rare occasions. The following explains how we currently do and do not use generative AI.
Should any part of our stance on AI ever change in the future, we will be transparent about it and update this disclosure immediately.
Young and the Invested Rules Concerning AI:
- We do not/will not publish stories, send emails, or produce any other editorial using generative AI programs such as ChatGPT or Jasper. In full disclosure, some past stories on Young and the Invested were created with the help of Jasper (or its predecessors)—we have been replacing these stories with fully human-written content and will continue until all such stories have been replaced.
- We do not/will not publish AI imagery, including photos, graphics, and video. We have assurances from our image providers that they do not accept AI imagery. Should we discover that AI imagery has made it onto our site, we will remove it as soon as possible.
- We do/will use AI tools that scour the internet as part of our process for ensuring our stories are plagiarism-free.
- We are open to the idea of testing out generative AI for process purposes. These include brainstorming and research. We will note that other publishers have reported mixed results from using generative AI for ideation. Their usefulness within our organization is yet to be determined. We are also open to the use of AI tools for data mining/data collection that would educate and inform editorial written by humans.
- We do/will inform all of our content creators about our AI policies. Should we determine that any of our content creators submit AI-generated content, or otherwise violate our policies, we will treat it like we would any other editorial violation and discipline them, up to and including termination.
