On the morning of Friday, May 17, it came to our attention that one of the pieces that we ran in issue seven of The Observer published the day prior was likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI), as were a couple of other stories submitted by the same reporter published in previous issues. The stories written by AI have been taken down from our website, and we are working on accountability. We are not identifying the piece that was generated by AI because it is not our goal to shame the reporter who made a mistake. We stand by and are proud of each news story that was published on May 16.
Upon learning about the instances mentioned above, 40 stories from this year were run through AI detection software including all the other content published in the May 16 issue, and aside from those mentioned above, they all came back as negative.
At The Observer, we explain to all staff members that the use of AI in any form is prohibited on the very first day of class. Each and every staff reporter and editor signs our Policy on Plagiarism, Fabrication and Journalistic Dishonesty at the beginning of the quarter which details our policy on AI, and how it is strictly forbidden.
The use of AI does not just affect the writer who uses it, but the entirety of the staff here at The Observer. Any use of AI in The Observer is an active agent in tarnishing the paper’s credibility, credibility that we have worked tirelessly to earn and maintain. Our current staff are in the position we are in now because of the work that previous editors and writers from across the years put in to establish a newspaper that people can trust. Our staff hopes to do that same thing, leaving a legacy for future aspiring journalists to look up to.
I hope that this incident doesn’t discredit all of the hard work that our editors and reporters put in. This is unfortunately not the first time AI-generated content made it into the paper. In the fall quarter, before my tenure, The Observer had two stories — one in the sports section, and the other in opinion — come back as AI positive. Because those stories were flagged as AI-generated after the end of the term, there was no mention of them in the issues of the newspaper published afterward. However, those stories were promptly removed from the website, as well as a few others to err on the side of caution.
These unfortunate instances have taught us that our editing process is flawed when it comes to catching the use of AI, and as times change, we need to change with them. In the afternoon that I’m writing this (May 20), I established guidelines to use moving forward, which include running every story we receive from our reporters through a detector before any editing of stories begins.
We are incredibly disheartened and disappointed at this incident. When I took the editor-in-chief position in January of this year, it was one of my main missions to continue to establish the credibility and prestige of The Observer, and this is a massive step back. I am still immensely proud of the work that we have done over the last two quarters, and especially of last week’s issue, which I think is still one of the strongest issues we have written in a long time. I, and we, hope that we can regain your trust in the weeks moving forward.
