AI Usage Policy in News Articles?

[AfraidRacer]

Longtime reader and GTPlanet fan, been checking in to this site almost daily for the past 7 or 8 years, even when I haven't been gaming much. Not claiming any sort of moral high ground here at all, but just curious about the use of GenAI in the main feed news articles? I came across a particular post which I was unsure of whether if it was written and formatted by AI or not, I'm not sure of the industry standard for this kind of stuff at all but would like to know if it was just me misinterpreting it, or even if not, I completely understand given the repetitive nature of some articles. Thanks and keep up the good work!

 

[KAlex122]

Why would you claim that of a "particular" article without linking it?

 

[AfraidRacer]

Why would you claim that of a "particular" article without linking it?

As mentioned, I don't want to create any unnecessary assumptions, and the writers are free to use whatever tools they wish. I don't wish to point out any specific writer, just want to satisfy the personal curiosity is all.

I understand there could be a lot of different ways to use GenAI as well, the article was a recent one which was a textual summary of a video posted. Not a writer but I could see AI being used to transcribe and summarise notes for the post, or to edit/proofread, or provide a template for the article, apart from just the blanket 'turn this video into a 500-word article' etc. I know GTPlanet has always had very high quality standards for content and naturally journalistic, informative language will always end up seeming 'AI' to some extent, but curious on if there is a line for it, and if so, where that line gets drawn.

 

[KAlex122]

As mentioned, I don't want to create any unnecessary assumptions,

But with your post you already did, didn't you?

I don't defend nor care about the AI use. Just wanted to point out what I'm reading.

 

[Famine]

We don't have a "policy", but nothing with my name on it on GTPlanet is written by anyone or anything else. I transcribe my own interviews too (sometimes I have used my phone's speech-to-text feature as a framework, but the most recent time was long before AI features were rammed into it).

While I'm often accused of being/likened to a robot, as someone who prefers to think of themselves as being difficult to imitate, I'm not sure that I take any comfort in the suggestion. GTP almost certainly has been used to train LLMs, but I can't imagine we're particularly heavily weighted.

 

[AfraidRacer]

We don't have a "policy", but nothing with my name on it on GTPlanet is written by anyone or anything else. I transcribe my own interviews too (sometimes I have used my phone's speech-to-text feature as a framework, but the most recent time was long before AI features were rammed into it).

While I'm often accused of being/likened to a robot, as someone who prefers to think of themselves as being difficult to imitate, I'm not sure that I take any comfort in the suggestion. GTP almost certainly has been used to train LLMs, but I can't imagine we're particularly heavily weighted.

Thanks for the clarification. Always have appreciated your insights and agree with you.

The article I'm referring to is "Driving All the New Cars in Gran Turismo 7 Spec III". While I understand that the views of one consumer definitely don't reflect the majority, 5 years ago I wouldn't question anything but seeing the prolific use of em-dashes is something I've been training myself to spot. Hence the question of requesting to clarify if AI was used here.

GTPlanet is definitely a website I've come to hold in much higher regard than the usual 'slop' and trust a lot for genuine hardware/software reviews. If no GenAI was used, perhaps the use of em-dashes could be curbed or reduced to generate more trust and goodwill among the consumers? Especially in an 'opinion' piece like that one, always helps to know that you're connecting with a 'real' person's thoughts and ideas for sure which is easier in videos, though deepfakes are of course becoming much more popular.

Thanks for the answer again

 

[Famine]

If no GenAI was used, perhaps the use of em-dashes could be curbed

This - and en-dashes - being a sign of GenAI is a fallacy. Quite simply, the reason they appear so much in AI output is because... humans use them so much, and there's so much of them in the training data. The myth hit so hard that humans started to eliminate them so that their writing looked less like AI, ironically making the myth sort of true, but only after-the-fact.

Personally I love 'em (and 'en) but I try to make sure - just because I hate repetition - that I only use at most one pair per paragraph and not in more than three successive paragraphs. You'll probably see this in my forum posts too.

 

[Jordan]

I have used AI for years now to edit articles, brainstorm ideas, fact-check source documents, and help write sections of articles like the Spec III driving impressions you're referencing. I encourage our writing staff to use any tool available to them to improve the speed, accuracy, and readability of their writing.

If no GenAI was used, perhaps the use of em-dashes could be curbed or reduced to generate more trust and goodwill among the consumers?

Oh, those em dashes were definitely hand-typed.

I'm well aware of the AI em-dash trope — it's on my mind every time I use them now — but I don't think it's a good reason to avoid such an important grammatical tool. We've also used the em-dash for many years in our content. A quick search of em-dashes in our WordPress database shows it has appeared in 2,243 (more than 20%!) of the 10,428 articles we've published, going all the way back to 2008.

GTPlanet is definitely a website I've come to hold in much higher regard than the usual 'slop' and trust a lot for genuine hardware/software reviews. [...] Especially in an 'opinion' piece like that one, always helps to know that you're connecting with a 'real' person's thoughts and ideas for sure which is easier in videos, though deepfakes are of course becoming much more popular.

Slop is a very real problem for the web, but quality and authenticity will always be a priority here. I am keenly aware that the internet will soon be dominated by AI, and the human connections possible on GTPlanet's forums will make our community even more important and unique in the future.

Also, just to be clear, the thoughts, impressions, and opinions in the driving impressions article all come directly from Chaz.

Personally I love 'em (and 'en) but I try to make sure - just because I hate repetition - that I only use at most one pair per paragraph and not in more than three successive paragraphs. You'll probably see this in my forum posts too.

Hmm. That sounds exactly what an AI would say, all while suddenly incorrectly using hyphens instead of em- or en-dashes to evade detection... 🤔