Quartz, the international business news outlet, has been quietly aggregating reporting from other outlets, including TechCrunch, in order to publish AI-generated articles under the byline “Quartz Intelligence Newsroom.”
Quartz started publishing simple AI-generated earnings reports months ago, but beginning last week, the outlet moved on to short articles. One of the 18 AI-generated articles published as of Monday afternoon, titled “South Korea shares preliminary findings on Jeju Air crash investigation,” aggregates reporting done by real journalists at CNN, MSN, and The Associated Press on MSN.com.
Each of the outlet’s AI-generated articles is roughly 400 words in length, and includes no full quotes from sources. Rather than attributing information in the body of the text, as flesh-and-blood journalists do, Quartz’s AI writer only cites its sources at the very top of its pieces.
A spokesperson for Quartz corporate parent G/O Media confirmed to TechCrunch the existence of a “purely experimental” AI newsroom, without commenting on which AI models or tools the publication uses to write AI-generated news articles.
It is not clear how Quartz’s AI newsroom chooses which stories to cover. The spokesperson said that the goal is to free up Quartz’s editorial staff to “work on longer and more deeply reported articles,” and that the editorial staff reviews each AI-generated story before it is published.
The quality control seems to be lacking, however, going by one article that Quartz’s AI newsroom sourced from TechCrunch last week.
The article in question is a piece I wrote detailing how you can delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts. For each platform, it provides step-by-step instructions on how to download and save your data before deleting it and, ultimately, your accounts.
This was a weird article to turn into a 300-word AI-generated summary. The Quartz article’s headline — “How to delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads right now” — hints at a how-to piece similar to mine. But its account deletion instructions are vague:
To permanently delete a Facebook account, users must navigate to the “Settings & Privacy” section and select “Account Ownership and Control.” It’s important to note that once an account is deleted, it cannot be retrieved. For Instagram, users either use the Account Center or settings to download their data before deleting their profiles. Deleting Threads profiles requires removing the linked Instagram account, as the two are interconnected.
I could probably spend all day critiquing the “AI-ness” of Quartz’s AI newsroom articles. I mean, just look at this headline: “Jobless claims rise slightly as continuing claims set a record.” Word echo aside, the clause is a contradiction. Jobless claims are rising only “slightly,” yet some other “continuing claims” are setting a record? Tsk, tsk. My editor would never let me publish something so sloppy.
G/O Media, which is owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners, came under fire in July 2023 for publishing error-filled AI-generated content without input from G/O’s editors or writers. The company’s editorial director at the time, Merrill Brown, defended the practice, even as journalists at G/O-owned outlets like Gizmodo objected to it.
Publishing AI-generated content presents a way for publishers like Quartz to access cheap labor — AI doesn’t command benefits and a salary, after all — while potentially maximizing profits. The G/O spokesperson said reader response to and engagement with its AI stories have “far exceeded our expectations to this point.”
The spokesperson also denied rumors of cash woes, saying that the company is “very well funded” with a “good amount of working capital to draw on if needed.” They also noted that previous staff reductions were due to the sale of some sites in 2024, but that Quartz is in the process of hiring more editorial staff.
G/O isn’t the first media organization to dabble with AI-generated content. CNET and Gannett have published their own factually inaccurate AI-generated stories and art, and — in the case of Sports Illustrated — under fabricated bylines.
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