The New York Times has greenlit AI tools for product and edit staff

The New York Times is now allowing its product and editorial teams to use AI tools, which might one day write social copy, SEO headlines, and code, reports Semafor. 

The news came to staff via an email, in which the publication announced the debut of its new internal AI summary tool called Echo.

The New York Times also shared a suite of AI products that staff could use to build web products or develop editorial ideas, alongside editorial guidelines for using AI tools. The paper’s editorial staff is encouraged to use AI tools to suggest edits, brainstorm interview questions, and help with research. At the same time, staff was warned not to use AI to draft or significantly revise an article or input confidential source information.

Those guidelines also suggest the Times might use AI to implement digitally voiced articles and translations into other languages. 

Semafor reports that The Times said it would approve AI programs like GitHub Copilot programming assistant for coding, Google’s Vertex AI for product development, NotebookLM, some Amazon AI products, and OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API through a business account. 

The New York Times’s embrace of AI tools comes as it is still embroiled in a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law by training generative AI on the publisher’s content.