AI-assisted journalism needs disclosure. Here’s mine

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company ’s Plugged In . Journalism might not be the world’s single most important job, but it does have one unique distinction: 100% of journalists are interested in it. So it’s no surprise that the profession is the subject of an outsize percentage of articles about the myriad ways AI is changing our world. I do admit, however, to be taken aback by how much of that coverage involves tales of journalists being embarrassed by entirely avoidable AI-fueled gaffes. On May 19, for example, Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reported that The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality , a new book by Steven Rosenbaum, executive director of the Sustainable Media Center (and a Fast Company contributor ), contained at least five quotes that appeared to have been manufactured, mangled, or misattributed by AI. Rosenbaum, who told Mullin he took “full responsibility” for the errors, is hardly the only writer to let hallucinated sound bites slip into their work. Earlier in May, The Times itself issued a correction for an article that had attributed an imaginary quote to a Canadian politician. Still, given the subject of Rosenbaum’s book, its AI fabrications couldn’t have been more freighted with irony. Each time I read about some journalistic AI mishap, I ask myself whether I’m at risk of being similarly ensnared. In this case, I’m confident the answer is no, for the simple reason that I never insert anything from a chatbot’s response directly into a story draft. Had a chatbot offered up a punchy quote from reporter/podcaster Kara Swisher —as one apparently did for Rosenbaum—I wouldn’t have assumed it was real unless I could trace it back to its source. That’s what I might quote. If every journalist resisted the temptation to cut and paste algorithmically generated text, far fewer of them would have AI blow up in their faces, Wile E. Coyote-style . But I don’t expect the self-owns to dwindle anytime soon. Indeed, they may proliferate as mor