Editor’s Letter on Generative AI and FT

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In its more than 130-year history, the Financial Times has upheld the highest standards of journalism. As editor of this newspaper, nothing interests me more than readers’ trust in the quality journalism we produce. Above all, quality means accuracy. It also means fairness and transparency.

That’s why today I’m sharing my current thinking on the use of generative AI in newsrooms.

Generative AI is the most significant new technology since the advent of the Internet. It is developing at breakneck speed and its applications and implications are still emerging. Generative AI models learn from massive amounts of published data, including books, publications, Wikipedia, and social media sites, to predict the next most likely word in a sentence.

This innovation is an increasingly important coverage area for us, and I am determined to make the FT an invaluable source of AI insights and analysis for years to come. But it also has obvious and potentially far-reaching implications for journalists and editors in how we go about our day-to-day work, and could help us in our story analysis and discovery. It has the potential to increase productivity and free up journalists and editors time to focus on generating and reporting original content.

However, while they seem very articulate and plausible, the AI ​​models on the market today are ultimately a prediction engine and are learning from the past. They can fabricate facts – this is what is called “hallucinations” – and invent references and connections. If manipulated enough, AI models can produce completely false images and articles. They also replicate existing social perspectives, including historical biases.

I am convinced that our mission to produce world-class journalism is all the more important in this age of rapid technological innovation. At a time when disinformation can be generated and spread rapidly and trust in the media in general has declined, we at the FT have a greater responsibility to be transparent, report the facts and pursue the truth. This is why FT journalism in the new age of AI will continue to be reported and written by humans who are the best in their fields and who are dedicated to reporting and analyzing the world as it is, accurately and fair.

The FT is also a pioneer in the digital journalism industry and our business colleagues will embrace AI to serve readers and clients and underpin our record of effective innovation. Our newsroom must also remain a hub for innovation. It is important and necessary for the FT to have a team in the newsroom that can responsibly experiment with AI tools to assist journalists with tasks such as data mining, text and image analysis, and translation. We will not publish AI-generated photorealistic images, but we will explore the use of AI-enhanced imagery (infographics, diagrams, photos) and when we do we will make it clear to the reader. This will not affect artists’ illustrations for the FT. The team will also evaluate, again with human supervision, the synthesis capabilities of generative AI.

We will be transparent, within the FT and with our readers. All of the editorial staff’s trials will be recorded in an internal registry, including, as far as possible, the use of third-party vendors who may be using the tool. Training for our journalists on using generative AI for story discovery will be provided through a series of masterclasses.

Each technology opens up exciting new frontiers that must be responsibly explored. But as recent history has demonstrated, enthusiasm must be accompanied by caution regarding the risk of disinformation and the corruption of the truth. The FT will remain committed to its core mission and keep readers informed as generative AI itself and our thinking about it evolves.