May 2025
As a media company, we are curious about new technology and its intersection with our work and people’s lives in Aotearoa. Being curious and thinking critically is what we do every day for our audiences.
Generative AI is a new technology, and we are curious about it. We have staff members who are interested in it, have written about it, and are continuing to learn more about it.
AI software can’t do shoe-leather journalism, write award-winning essays or interview a potential prime minister live on air during a 12-hour mega podcasting marathon. You will not read words on The Spinoff that have been generated using Generative AI. We are experimenting with ways it can assist us in tasks such as summarising transcripts or data, but our default position is that any Generative AI output requires human oversight and constant, rigorous checking. We take care to consider bias in AI-generated content and maintain human oversight at all decision points.
Our audience trusts us, and as such, we want to make our current position regarding the use of Generative AI in editorial work at The Spinoff available to them.
Generative AI is not used for editorial writing or editing tasks. We do not and will not publish work that has used Generative AI to produce the words you read on The Spinoff. There are a couple of exceptions:
- We utilise an AI tool to assist us in generating alternative text for images. These must be reviewed by a human before publishing.
- Parody. There is an obvious exception when AI-generated images or Gen AI in writing are used very obviously as a parody of AI-generated images/Gen AI images, as examples of both, or in a humourous context like aging one of our writers up when they write about superannuation. Images created using these tools will be acknowledged in the caption, and the use of Gen AI writing or parody purposes will be very apparent and noted.
Other uses:
- We use design software that utilises a form of basic AI to perform basic tasks, such as background removal on images. We do not use generate imagery via prompts in AI image generators like Text to Image, DALL·E and Imagen. We do not use AI image tools to generate or edit human figures, create hyper-realistic scenarios or manipulate news photography. Best efforts and care are taken to avoid using imagery generated via prompt-based AI tools when using media from image libraries.
- Our staff can use Generative AI to brainstorm, analyse and summarise publicly available documents and datasets. Outputs, such as facts, data analysis, or quotes, are reviewed by writers and editors. It is well-documented that generative models of large language models, such as Google Gemini, Claude, and Chat GPT, make many mistakes.