News OnTheWight has always explored technology to improve news publishing, to the benefit of readers.
We were one of the first local news publications in the country to use the power of online publishing, enabling us to break the monopoly of a single news publication.
We’ve continued to do this, for example, getting the council to open its meeting up to scrutiny and allow the media to report live from council meetings – we even had to gain special authorisation to record them (seems amazing now that this was a struggle, doesn’t it?)
Pioneering auto-generating article since 2015
Indeed, (we worked with Islander, Tony Hirst) to become one of the first publications in the world to auto-generate articles using technology/computers, way back in 2015 – now eight years later, auto-generating articles is suddenly on everyone’s lips.
We are a small news team – people are often shocked at how few people are daily involved with producing News OnTheWight – so we have to be nimble, taking advantages where we find them. As you would expect, we don’t do this impulsively, we do it with care and due consideration. The only reason we adopt any technology, including AI, is so we can service you, the reader, better.
We – the collective world – are in our first few steps with AI. At the start of our relationship with something no-one knows where it will end. We’re certain, major tech shocks withstanding, it will grow to be a part of everyone’s lives in the future. Given that, what we say now is highly-likely to change in the future, so we’ll update this document if changes occur, in order to ensure what’s below is the current state:
How News OnTheWight uses AI currently
We use the best available AI tools at the time – as an assistant.
Sometimes it helps us summarise documents and articles, analyse data, proof-reading and checking grammar, create images, reform or suggest text.
We use it carefully, think of it as a junior assistant that requires careful oversight.
Let’s say we’d used it to restructure some text – As we would do with any article that a human writer might submit to us – it’s read over, checked for errors and fact checked, reviewed and edited by a (human) staff member before we put it in front of you.
