In a move that has ignited debate, the Los Angeles Times has begun using artificial intelligence to generate responses and political assessments for its opinion pieces.
Recently, an opinion piece published in the LA Times, co-authored by Rachel Antell, Stephanie Jenkins, and Jennifer Petrucelli, directors of the Archival Producers Alliance, warned of the dangers of AI, particularly in documentary filmmaking. The authors expressed their concerns about the technology’s potential to undermine the credibility of visuals.
The LA Times’s new AI tool, dubbed “Insight,” labeled the piece as “center-left” and, controversially, generated a response arguing in favor of AI’s role in democratizing storytelling, a viewpoint directly contradicting the original authors’ concerns.
The opinion piece argued, “Some in the film world have met the arrival of generative AI tools with open arms. We and others see it as something deeply troubling on the horizon.”
The AI tool countered that AI “democratizes historical storytelling” and that “technological advancements can coexist with safeguards” and that “regulation risks stifling innovation”.
According to the newspaper’s billionaire owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the AI-generated content is designed to provide “voice and perspective from all sides.” He wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “No more echo chamber.” The AI-generated responses are not reviewed by Los Angeles Times journalists before publication.
Matt Hamilton, vice-chair of the LA Times Guild, the union representing the paper’s journalists, expressed a dissenting view. “While the paper’s journalists support efforts to improve news literacy and to distinguish news from opinion, we don’t think this approach – AI-generated analysis unvetted by editorial staff – will do much to enhance trust in the media,” he said in a statement. “Quite the contrary, this tool risks further eroding confidence in the news.”
The AI tool’s “different views” are generated in partnership with Perplexity, an AI company, while the political analysis is created with Particle News, the Los Angeles Times stated.
