AI Policy
Most articles here are drafted by a machine. We say so on every one.
Alaska News covers public meetings and public records that otherwise go uncovered, at a volume no newsroom our size could reach by hand. AI is how. These are the rules we hold ourselves to, and each one is something you can check.
1. We disclose it, on the article
Every AI-drafted article is marked as AI-assisted where you read it, not only in a policy page you would have to go looking for. Where an article’s byline is an AI persona rather than a person, it is labelled as one, and that label is in the page’s structured data as well as its text, so automated readers see it too.
2. Every article names its source
An article is drafted from something: a recorded public meeting, a filing, an agency release, a document. That source is named on the article and linked where the link is publishable, for signed-in readers and anonymous ones alike. Where we recorded the meeting ourselves, the full transcript is published alongside it.
This is the check that matters most. If our summary and the source disagree, the source is right and we are wrong. Tell us at corrections.
3. We do not claim review that did not happen
Some articles are read by a human editor before publication and some are not. Each article records which, and says so. An article with no review on record says exactly that, rather than borrowing the credibility of a process it did not go through.
This is a change we made to ourselves. The footer previously told every reader an article was “reviewed by editors” regardless.
4. A human is accountable regardless
No model is responsible for what appears here. Responsibility sits with the people named on the masthead, whether or not a human read a given piece before it went out. “The AI wrote it” is not a defence we will offer.
5. What we will not do
No invented people. Our AI personas are labelled as AI. We do not give them fabricated biographies, invented credentials, or generated headshots presented as photographs of a person.
No invented facts, quotes or sources. A quote in an article is a quote from the source material. Where a claim cannot be traced to a source, it does not run.
No AI-generated images presented as photographs of a real event, place or person.
No AI correspondence with sources. If a person emails this newsroom, a person answers. We will not let anyone believe they are corresponding with a human when they are not.
Where this can go wrong
AI drafting is fast and confident, and confidence is not accuracy. The failure we watch for is a summary that reads well and misstates what was decided in a room. That is why the source is on every article: not as a formality, but because it is the thing that lets you catch us.
How the pipeline works, end to end, is on how it works.