According to TechCrunch, the information that the New York Times allows the use of AI tools was given when the newspaper was still involved in a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, with accusations of violating copyright laws when training general AI on the publisher's work content.
New York Times staff received an email notification allowing editing groups to use internal AI tools to write reports, create interview samples, set SEO standards...
The New York Times shares a set of AI products that employees can use to build web products or develop editing ideas, along with a set of instructions on how to use AI tools to edit products. The newspaper's editors are encouraged to use these AI tools to propose editing, considering interview questions and research aids.
Those guidelines also suggest that New York Times editors can use AI to deploy digital voiceover articles and translations into other languages.
At the same time, employees are also warned not to use AI to draft or edit much of the content of an article or enter information from unreliable sources.
Semafor said that the New York Times will approve AI programs such as Git CopHubilot programming assistant to encrypt information, Google's Vertex AI to develop product content, NotebookLM and some Amazon AI products and API (not OpenAI's ChatGPT) through business accounts.
