The Scoop
Politico’s new AI product has generated garbled or made-up Washington intelligence, including a lobbying effort by a fictional basket-weaver guild, the outlet’s unionized staff has complained.
Last year, Semafor first reported that Politico was working on a new product with Capital AI: a new AI tool for its high-paying subscribers that promised to allow them to instantaneously generate detailed reports on topics with information collected by Politico’s reporters.
Earlier this year, Politico’s editorial union filed a complaint against the company over its use of AI, which editorial staffers said violated language in their contract that stipulated that if AI is used, it “must be done in compliance with POLITICO’s standards of journalistic ethics and involve human oversight.”
In several examples printed out and shared in Politico’s Rosslyn, Virginia, newsroom last week, staff pointed to instances where the tool appeared to garble the publication’s reporting, or generate reports filled with completely made-up information.
Queried by a staffer about what issues the fictional “Basket Weavers Guild” and “League of Left-Handed Plumbers” are lobbying Congress about, the AI tool generated a plausible report:
The Basket Weavers Guild is currently lobbying Congress to address issues related to data privacy. They are particularly concerned about the new data privacy proposal being drafted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Guild is advocating for stronger consumer rights and limits on data collection, which were part of previous bipartisan efforts but are no longer being considered in the current proposal. They believe that the new proposal, which focuses on preempting state data privacy laws and limiting enforcement to government agencies, does not adequately protect consumer interests. [1]
On the other hand, the League of Left-handed Plumbers is focusing its lobbying efforts on the No Tax on Tips Act. This bipartisan legislation, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz, aims to allow taxpayers to deduct up to $25,000 in tips from their federal tax returns. The League supports this bill as it could provide significant financial relief to plumbers who often receive tips as part of their income. However, they are also aware of the potential negative impacts, such as reduced federal revenues and the risk of making low-income workers ineligible for certain benefits.
Staff also found what they said were egregious errors in other reports.
When the product was first rolled out several months ago, the company’s AI did not seem to know that Roe v. Wade had been overturned — an ironic twist, considering Politico broke the news of its reversal months before the decision was formally announced in 2022.
“With the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republican lawmakers in Indiana are contemplating a special session to strengthen the state’s anti-abortion stance,” an AI-generated report said.
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“The most requested feature by our subscribers was a customizable summary of our POLITICO content,” the company said in a statement to Semafor. “We responded and our subscribers have been thrilled with the early results of our beta test. As with any new technology, especially AI, this is a work in progress.”
Politico’s leadership has previously pushed back on the union’s criticism, saying the report generator is not a replacement for journalists’ jobs and is more akin to a search engine of Politico’s existing reporting. Politico’s report generator also emphatically emphasizes to users that it remains in beta testing, and is largely intended to be a search engine-like guide.
Some earlier errors flagged by the newsroom, including the Roe v. Wade example, were corrected by Politico’s product team.
Know More
Axel Springer, Politico’s parent company, has been one of the more aggressive digital media companies in testing out new AI tools, despite some wariness from editorial staff. The Politico Pro report generator was created in response to demand from many of the publication’s most important subscribers, who pay premium rates for access to its information.
In a note to staff last month, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner said that artificial intelligence will be crucial to the company’s success and will help it “work more efficiently and simply deliver better content.”
“In the future, there will be only two types of companies: those that use artificial intelligence extensively to break new and better ground, and those that fail to grasp this and will therefore disappear. There will only be disruptors and the disrupted,” he said. “The excellent will become even better, while the mediocre will vanish. Anyone who believes differently is fooling themselves.”
Both Politico and Business Insider, which is also owned by Axel Springer, have been aggressively embracing AI in recent months, sparking some internal debates about these still-nascent technologies and tools.
As Semafor reported last week, an attempt to better educate staff on business journalism was thwarted when an editor suggested a reading list for employees that contained nonexistent books, potentially the result of an AI hallucination.
In an all-staff meeting last week first reported by Semafor, Business Insider Editor in Chief Jamie Heller assured staff that despite a recent 21% reduction in staff, no jobs were being replaced by automated tools.