Following a series of recent scandals involving artificial intelligence, The New York Times has imposed restrictions on its writers and editors regarding the use of AI.
The New York Times has taken a radical step on artificial intelligence. After suffering reputational damage due to AI-generated errors and plagiarism cases that recently appeared in its pages, the newspaper set out its red lines in a “periodic reminder” message sent to its freelance contributors.
The newspaper’s management emphasized that all content must be “the product of pure human craftsmanship” which placed strict limits on the use of digital tools.
The new guidelines issued by NYT prohibit not only having artificial intelligence write articles, but also using these tools to “clean up” or “rephrase” existing text.
The list of banned tools includes popular chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, as well as image generation tools such as Adobe Firefly and DALL-E.
Freelance writers are also prohibited from submitting their articles or drafts to these systems as “input” on the grounds of intellectual property and original authorship principles.
AI-Generated Articles Prompted the Decision
Several serious mistakes in recent months reportedly played a role in the newspaper’s tough stance. In March, it emerged that an emotional essay published in the Modern Love column had been constructed with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
Then, in April, significant plagiarism was identified in a book review because of the use of AI, and the newspaper terminated its relationship with the writer involved. NYT argues that such incidents cast a shadow over the publication’s long established credibility.
The AI controversy was not limited to freelance contributors. Last week, an article published under the byline of the head of The New York Times’ Canada bureau was found to contain what was presented as a quotation from a politician, but which was actually an AI-generated summary.
In a comprehensive correction published weeks later, the newspaper acknowledged that the reporter should have independently verified the output generated by artificial intelligence.
