Newspaper conglomerate Gannett is adding AI-generated summaries to the top of its articles

Gannett, the media company that owns hundreds of newspapers in the US, is launching a new program that adds AI-generated bullet points to the top of journalists’ stories, according to an internal memo seen by On the edge.

The AI ​​feature, called “key points” in stories, uses automated technology to create summaries that appear below a headline. The bottom of articles includes a disclaimer, which reads: “The key points at the beginning of this article were created with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed by a journalist before publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI.” The memo is dated May 14 and notes that participation is optional at this time.

Summaries appear to be already active in some USA today stories online (Gannett has USA today papers). The AI-generated summary “aims to enhance the reporting process and elevate the audience experience,” according to the memo, which also states that The AI ​​model that powers the tool was trained internally for nine months.

Gannett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gannett has previously experimented with AI content in incidents where the company quickly backed down after embarrassing mistakes. Last August, Gannett Pulled the plug in AI-generated sports recaps after readers mocked the weirdness of the writing. In October, the Gannett team at Reviewed, the company’s consumer products website, claimed that content appearing online was produced using AI. As I reported last year, the third-party marketing firm that produced this work was also behind the Sports Illustrated AI controversy where AI-generated authors were credited as writers. At the time, Gannett insisted that product reviews were not created with AI tools.

The addition of AI-generated summaries comes as members of a local union raise concerns about proposed contract language regarding the use of AI. According to Digidiaunionized workers in Democrat and Chronicleand in Rochester, New York, we were alarmed to see a clause added to their contract during negotiation that said: “Artificial intelligence (AI) may be used to generate news content.”

AI-generated summaries in news articles reflect what’s happening with search platforms: At the Google I/O developer conference this week, the tech giant revealed all the ways AI would become part of Search, including the addition of AI answers at the top of results pages. Even TikTok is experimenting with AI-generated “overviews” on search results pages. The prospect of elevating AI responses – which are trained on human-created content – ​​above real websites and links can be harmful to publishers and your traffic, as users drop off after reading AI summaries rather than continuing with the source material.

Gannett did not immediately respond On the edgeabout whether AI summaries could disincentivize readers from reading the real story.