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Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy

Organ Mountain News tries to find the balance between utilizing the benefits of innovative technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, while minimizing the ethical and privacy risks involved. Artificial Intelligence is now becoming so ubiquitous that we find it important to define and disclose our use and policies around the technology.

What is generative AI (GenAI)?

Generative AI (GenAI) is an artificial intelligence tool capable of generating new content including text, video, audio, code and images.

Examples of GenAI tools used by Organ Mountain News: 

Our limitations on AI use

  • We will never use GenAI as the sole or primary creator or reviewer of content. 
  • All AI-generated content must be part of a human-led process, and anything resulting from GenAI must be reviewed by a human as part of our editorial processes prior to publication. 
  • Human interjection isn’t possible with the use of some real-time AI elements. Such cases include user-interactive elements, support chatbots, auto-captioning or other accessibility tools, or utilization of tools on live streams or video conferencing platforms. However, in such cases, the use of AI tools will be clearly disclosed.

How does Organ Mountain News use GenAI?

  • Ideation: We may use GenAI to help us brainstorm ideas or wording, or dig deeper into a concept to come up with a story idea.
  • Organization: We may use GenAI to help draft or write communications with sources (e.g. emails). But, we won’t rely on AI to conduct interviews or report for us. At times, we do use AI tools to transcribe our interviews, but we ensure that any resulting files are stored safely and securely.
  • Sourcing and fact-checking: We may use AI tools to aid in finding sources or verifying information in our reporting. However, all of our published content is reported, written and reviewed by Organ Mountain News humans.

Labeling AI generated or co-generated content

All content where any significant element is generated or co-generated with GenAI tools will be labeled as such in the text body, caption, editor’s note or other clearly identifiable manner. 

We will not label GenAI use in purely mechanical processes such as the sorting, organization or processing of existing data, in the use of pre-production ideation, or in non-production applications (e.g. asking ChatGPT for a list of ideas for social media videos, or how to less awkwardly introduce ourselves to new subscribers).

Privacy and data security

We will never submit sensitive or protected information through open, proprietary or shared AI platforms (e.g. ChatGPT) where the information use and privacy cannot be controlled. This does not include utilizing publicly available or openly-sourced information in discovery or research through AI or similar tools (e.g. using Google to check a name or fact or to find additional context.)

Ethical standards 

At Organ Mountain News we want to honestly acknowledge the risks and disruptive realities that exist when adopting new technologies. We believe AI can be a disruptive tool that can increase the efficiency, quality and effectiveness of human work. We aim to take every possible action so that it is used to enhance, rather than replace, human work in our operations. We will also work to reduce and mitigate any harm that may be caused to individuals if technology causes a job or role to become obsolete. This may include providing additional training, redefining roles or processes, expanding responsibilities and empowering people to be the overseers and maintainers of technology instead of just doers of replaceable tasks.

Special thanks

These policies have been heavily inspired by and adapted from the work and policies of many other newsrooms and organizations that we believe set the highest standards of representing fairness and equity in journalism. We specifically want to thank and attribute the Institute for Nonprofit News, Chicago Sun-Times, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Wisconsin Watch, WCPO Cincinnati, Prison Journalism Project, Afro LA and Trusting News as references.