AI Policy
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a powerful tool to aid journalistic endeavours, helping to make newsrooms more efficient and free up reporters’ time to focus on the issues that matter most.
However, AI – such as generative AI and LLMs (large language models) – also represent a myriad of risks which, if realized, could undermine our work serving the community. Therefore, Energeticcity.ca wishes to be transparent about our policies and workflow regarding the use of AI, so readers can trust our coverage now and into the future. This document sets out what Energeticcity.ca considers to be acceptable use of AI as a tool and what is unacceptable.
Unacceptable Use of AI
- Energeticcity.ca does not use AI to write or word articles from scratch. Stories are written by human employees.
- Energeticcity.ca does not rely on AI to fact-check information or leads gained in the course of reporting work, or to research a topic.
- Energeticcity.ca does not use AI to significantly alter images or create illustrations, such as graphics or cartoons.
- Energeticcity.ca does not use AI to voice podcasts mimicking human speech
Acceptable Use of AI
- Energeticcity.ca may use AI spell-checking or proofreading tools on original written copy, such as Grammarly. The last check is always by a human employee.
- Energeticcity.ca may use a headline generator to spark ideas. However, employees edit and change the suggestions as required.
- Almost all smartphones automatically ‘touch up’ images captured on the device, such as to improve lighting at night or to reduce blur. Energeticcity.ca employees may use smartphones to take pictures for stories.
- Energeticcity.ca may transcribe interviews using AI tools and generate subtitles for videos, including for use on social media. Quotes and subtitles are then checked by a human against the source material and only tweaked for clarity, not to change meaning. This means removing repeated words or filler sounds and words such as “er,” “um,” and “like” in some circumstances.
- Energeticcity.ca generates audio to voice the words of written articles and improve the accessibility of our work for disabled readers.
- While Energeticcity.ca will not rely on AI to research, employees may use AI summarization tools as a starting point. All information will subsequently be independently verified by a human.
Energeticcity.ca retains the ultimate accountability for anything published by Energeticcity.ca on the site. Canadian Press articles are also published by Energeticcity.ca, and its policy on AI can be found here.
Any AI use in the newsroom will be transparent and properly credited.
Reporters are responsible for the accuracy and originality of work, while editors are responsible tone and agenda of the newsroom.
