Generative AI is a real tool and we use it for some of our work. This page tells you exactly where, how, and with what guardrails — so readers can decide for themselves what to make of any piece on this site.
Where we use AI
- Research assistance — summarising documents, transcripts, and public records that a reporter then verifies against the source.
- Headline and summary drafting — proposals that a human editor selects, rewrites, and signs off on. No headline ships untouched.
- Copy editing — spell, grammar, and style suggestions, reviewed by a human.
- Data and code — assistance with scripts that process public data; outputs are spot-checked against the source data.
Where we do not use AI
- To invent facts, quotes, sources, or details that did not appear in our reporting
- To generate full articles for publication without a named human author who reported and wrote the piece
- To impersonate real people in audio, video, or image form
- To produce photorealistic images presented as documentary photography
Disclosure
If any portion of a piece was substantively drafted with AI assistance — beyond ordinary spell-check and editing tools — the article carries an “AI-assisted draft, edited by <human>” line near the byline. The named editor is accountable for the published version.
Images and graphics
Photographs published on this site are real photographs. Any AI-generated illustration is labelled “Illustration” with the model and prompt available on request. AI-generated images are not used for hard-news photography, election results, or anything that could be mistaken for a documentary record.
Audio and video
We do not synthesise the voice or likeness of a real person. Archival recordings are presented as captured; clarifying labels are added when audio has been cleaned, trimmed, or excerpted.
Vendors and models
We work with a small set of model providers under data-processing agreements. Source material from confidential sources, unpublished drafts, and pre-publication reporting are not submitted to third-party models without an enterprise data agreement that excludes the input from training.
How this policy can change
This is a moving area. We will update this page whenever the practice changes and note the date of the change at the top of the page. Material shifts are also flagged to subscribers in the briefing newsletter.