A senior Associated Press product manager for AI strategy drew criticism from some staff after saying that resistance to the technology is “futile,” according to a Semafor report.
Aimee Rinehart said she believed reporters could do their jobs more effectively if they let large language models write a story using their notes and quotes, claiming that some editors have told her they preferred “to have reporters report and have articles at least pre-written by AI.”
“There are many — and I mean MANY — editors who would prefer an AI-written article to a human-written one. Reporting and writing are two different skill sets and rare — RARE — is the occasion when it’s wrapped into one person,” she wrote in an internal Slack message, according to Semafor.
The Slack comments came as staffers discussed the Cleveland Plain Dealer editor’s view that reporters should utilize AI to write stories in order to spend more time reporting. The Plain Dealer’s employment of the technology follows other newsrooms’ experimentation with AI, whether to help streamline internal processes or to write stories wholesale.
Such experimentation has included some pitfalls. Ars Technica fired a reporter this week after he inadvertently included fabricated quotes in an article while using AI.
Rinehart, who doesn’t work in the AP newsroom, said she believed the outlets had a financial imperative to use the technology — and that others would do the same.
“Because local newsrooms are so strapped, they are turning for assistance on the news making process in every direction. Advance Publications got there first, others will follow,” Rinehart wrote. “Resistance is futile.”
Rinehart’s Slack comments angered some staffers over her characterization of their work.
One wrote on Slack that the “dismissiveness and disdain” shown for human writing is “insulting and abhorrent,” according to Semafor. They said that “strong reporting and clear writing are the lifeblood of journalism, not AI-written slop” and that “denigrating the work of colleagues who write for a living without whom there would be no AP, is disgraceful.”
Another wrote that it was “hard not to escape the feeling that the people hyping/guiding the decisions around these powerful tools exist in a totally different reality than the people who wake up every day and do the work of reporting.”
An AP spokesperson told TheWrap that the discussion, which spanned different departments, “doesn’t reflect the overall position of the AP regarding the use of AI.”
“We’ve been an industry leader in setting AI standards that safeguard the vital role of journalists, while also allowing for AI use for things like language translation, summarizations, transcriptions and content tagging,” they said. “The essential role of the AP is to deliver accurate, nonpartisan, eyewitness reporting from all around the world. Our journalists are as important as ever — and our customers and audiences deeply value the work they do every day.”
