The Washington Post's AI-Assisted Opinion Section: A Controversial Shift in Journalism

The Washington Post is planning to let amateur writers submit columns -- with the help of AI

Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. The Washington Post could soon allow non-professional writers to submit opinion columns using an AI writing coach known as Ember, according to a report from The New York Times. The move is reportedly part of a broader initiative to open the paper to outside opinion pieces, including from other publications, Substack writers, and amateur columnists. Sources tell the Times that Ember "could automate several functions normally provided by human editors," including by offering a "story strength" tracker that indicates how a piece is progressing. The tool also reportedly has a sidebar showing the fundamental parts of a story, such as an "early thesis," "supporting points," and a "memorable ending." the Times adds that writers would also have access to an AI assistant, which would support them with prompts and "developmental questions." The project is reportedly called Ripple internally, and sources tell the Times that the articles will be available without a subscription on the outlet's website and app. The publication aims to secure its first partnerships this summer, while incorporating the AI writing coach will be part of the project's "final phase" that could begin testing this fall, according to the Times. Human editors would reportedly review the pieces before they're published, which would be separate from the newspaper's opinion section. The Washington Post has undergone a major shift over the past several months, with newspaper owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly intervening to cancel the outlet's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. The billionaire later told staff that the Post will no longer publish opinion articles that go against "free speech and free markets," according to a February report from The New York Times. Ripple is reportedly meant to cater to readers looking for "more breadth" than the paper's existing opinion section.

Will The Washington Post Embrace the AI Slush Pile?

Reducing the role of human editorial judgment is the last thing opinion journalism needs. Early in my career, I worked as an assistant at a literary agency. Big publishers generally consider taking on only writers already represented by agents, which makes literary agencies a front line of sorts. As the person opening the mail, I was the front line of the front line. I saw the true democratic range of the slush pile, full of pitches that no one had vouched for and, for the most part, that no one ever would. One thing I learned: There's a lot of writing out there that you, the reader, just don't need in your life. Some of it is inaccurate. Some of it is self-serving. Above all, a lot of it is just not interesting enough to find many readers: generic, predictable, telling you something you've already heard. Editorial gatekeepers get a bad name, but from another point of view, they are heroically holding back a tidal wave of crap while, ideally, letting the good stuff through. That early lesson in the value of editorial judgment came back to me this week, when The New York Times reported on an effort taking shape at The Washington Post under its owner, Jeff Bezos, and its publisher, Will Lewis. Through a project internally called Ripple, Post executives intend to dramatically expand opinion writing at the paper, creating an offering outside the paywall that will include content from partner news organizations and Substack. More controversially, a final phase of the plan will employ an AI writing coach called Ember to assist "nonprofessional writers" in submitting op-eds. This effort was not exactly news to me. Until January, I was a senior editor at the now almost completely hollowed-out Opinions section of the Post. Along with others from across the organization, I'd participated about a year ago in a brainstorming session on what would become Ripple. At that point, it was clear already that Bezos was interested in massively scaling up the output of our section, perhaps on the model of Amazon -- which had scaled up and up for years before turning a profit. It had also become clear that the way to management's heart was to cite artificial intelligence as the means to any end, a special technological sauce to be drizzled on everything. Damon Beres and Charlie Warzel: At least two newspapers syndicated AI garbage Although I'd started out skeptical, by the end of the session, I was convinced that the Post did have the potential to reach a larger audience. Readers want locally relevant news, but local outlets are succumbing one by one to the dynamics of a centralized online market for both content and advertising. If we were so determined to scale up, why couldn't the Post partner with existing local news sources, offering them a tech back end, a network effect, and a cut of resources while tapping a much larger pool of locally written and edited work? Some elements of those ideas seem to have trickled into the Ripple project. But another vision was presented at the brainstorm too, the spark of what is now called Ember. The concept seemed to be that anyone could write a good op-ed, if only they had coaching from an AI editor. As a newsroom AI strategist explained the premise to the members of the group -- most of whom had never faced an inbox of op-ed submissions -- I felt filled with dread, because the content that this program would yield sounded dreadful. When you consider pitches, as an editor of opinion content, you look for surprise: insightful analysis of new information, diagnosis of and perhaps solutions to an unappreciated problem, a personal tale told in a way that makes you laugh or tear up, an original way of experiencing something familiar. Generative AI based on large language models, by contrast, is optimized to produce writing with the opposite qualities. It is a predictability machine, operating by asking what word is most likely to come next in a sentence based on all the other text that has fed into its training data. This doesn't mean that AI can't be a useful tool for certain kinds of writing and editing, but it does mean that an AI editor will probably exacerbate exactly the qualities that make the opinion slush pile so slushy in the first place. What Ember seems likely to produce, in other words, is the kind of writing I have spent my whole career trying to hold back. There are good uses for AI at a newspaper, which is why it's so puzzling that everyone keeps trying to make AI do not those tasks but the ones it is bad at, the ones that we humans most want to keep for ourselves. Just to take one example, much of the Washington Post archive is inaccessible via search; why not use AI to crawl, tag, and make discoverable this huge body of work? Maybe because that's not showy enough. Everyone these days seems to want to make AI the writer, the editor, the creator, the star. But within media, at least, that's not the best use case for this technology. Instead, we should be using these powerful tools for scut work, data crunching, even brainstorming -- not as a substitute for the editorial judgment and critical thought that make writing worth reading. "The values of The Post do not need changing," Bezos wrote when he bought the newspaper, in 2013. "The paper's duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners." That declaration became harder to trust last year, when Bezos blocked the Post editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris, on the pretext that he had suddenly decided that making presidential endorsements gave the impression of bias -- only to cheer the "extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory" of Donald Trump just a few weeks later. Listen: The media is splitting in two The proposed use of Ember casts doubt on the commitment to readers too. If Bezos is really interested in scaling up opinion writing beyond the scope of human editors, what he's essentially doing is either starting a social blogging network -- something like Medium, Reddit, or Substack -- or a contributor platform of glorified press releases, such as the one abandoned in 2018 by HuffPost as a drag on its brand. As the New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen wrote on X, "When I was editor of HuffPost we shut down our contributor platform because it was bad for our journalism and it did not contribute significant traffic or revenue." If Bezos wants to run a social network, perhaps to compete with Elon Musk for clout, that's fine. But let's not pretend that it's journalism, or that it's good for the Post and its readers. As recently as 2021, when the paper had already been under Bezos's ownership for years, the Post was touting a plan to add 41 new editors to the newsroom. "This expansion demonstrates anew that The Washington Post is an ascendant news organization, with boundless ambitions and a growing capacity to meet them," wrote then-Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and her team. That memo might as well be from another universe. Today, the Post's owner seems to have lost track of those ambitions, or replaced them with other ones. But if the journalistic or commercial health of the paper as an institution still matters to him, I hope he will realize that using AI to scale up the slush pile is a poor idea. If that's really Bezos's dream for the nation's readers, he should pursue it separate from the Post, rather than risk undermining the editorial tradition that has made the paper great.

Jeff Bezos's Washinton Post Plans to Add Random Opinion Writers Edited by AI

The opinion section has become a particular obsession for Bezos. Given how artificial intelligence's pitfalls dominate the daily news cycle, you'd think that the media industry would take a cautionary approach to AI. Yeah, think again. In an effort to boost readership, the Washington Post plans to expand its opinion section to include newbie writers who will be guided by artificial intelligence. Since April, the Post has worked on scaling an initiative to bring new voices to the paper. Multiple people confirmed with the New York Times that the program, dubbed Ripple, involves publishing established Substack writers and nonprofessionals. On the surface, it sounds similar to previous contributor models utilized (not necessarily successfully) by the Huffington Post and Forbes. The biggest difference is that the Post won't guide new writers with a human. That's way too basic. Instead, the outlet will use Ember, an AI coach, to oversee the process. Per the Times, its current prototypes include a "story strength" tracker and a sidebar laying out basic components like "early thesis", "supporting points," and "memorable ending". It also features a live assistant to deliver writing prompts and help shape content. Each article, which will be published outside of the Post's usual paywall, will still be reviewed by a human before it goes live. Per the Times, Ember will begin testing this fall. But why test it at all? We've seen this exact same scenario play out before. Just two years ago, CNET came under fire after publishing AI-guided articles with barely any disclosure. Although editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo later stated that each story was "reviewed, fact-checked and edited by an editor with topical expertise", Futurism broke down how one of the articles highlighted by Guglielmo was riddled with errors. The Post has struggled to successfully adapt to the ever-changing media landscape. Last year, it launched a new subscription model in an attempt to boost revenue after losing $77 million. But a fancy subscription model can't save you if you're led by dickheads. In January, the Post laid off about 4 percent of its workforce in an effort to recoup losses. Just a month later, owner Jeff Bezos' controversial overhaul of the opinion section (which prompted opinion editor David Shipley to immediately resign) cost the outlet over 75,000 digital subscribers. Artificial intelligence could potentially be useful for journalism. Currently, the Times uses it to shift through large databases and recommend articles. Except Ember is being given a much more significant role. And given that journalists at multiple outlets, including the Atlantic and Politico, are pushing back against AI, the Post's entire plan seems especially ridiculous. But hey, what the hell do we know?

The Washington Post Is Secretly Planning to Start Publishing Articles Created Using AI

As the news media continues its often-disastrous pivot towards generative artificial intelligence, the most prominent publication yet has jumped on board: the Washington Post, it turns out, has quietly been building an AI tool designed to let underqualified writers publish content in its storied pages. According to multiple sources familiar with the plan who spoke to the New York Times, since April the newspaper has been secretly building a program known as "Ripple" that appears to be part syndication, part talent network akin to contributor schemes at HuffPost and Forbes. The biggest difference from those prior contributor networks and this one, though, is the way the sausage will be made. Along with partnerships with established writers, the new program will employ an "AI writing coach" called "Ember" designed to guide "nonprofessionals" through the article-writing process. That tool will, per early prototypes described to the NYT, hand-hold aspiring columnists through every aspect of the writing process from start to finish. Its sidebar will instruct writers to devise an "early thesis," list out "supporting points," and provide a "memorable ending" -- all while a live AI chatbot weighs in and a "story strength" tracker evaluates their progress. At the end of it all, a human editor is said to review the columns before they go to publication -- though in practice, similar promises have often ended in disaster, like at CNET, which promised that editors were reviewing the scores of AI-generated articles it ran before it turned out they were riddled with errors and plagiarism. Though the outputs from WaPo's program wouldn't be entirely generated by AI, it sounds like everything but. And in practice, as we've seen time and again, the temptation with AI is to use it not as a thoughtful creative partner but as a speedrunning tool to churn out large quantities of low-quality material, or to cook up something that sounds confident but is shaky on the undergirding facts and logic. In other words, it sounds like the program could be poised to take everything that's currently broken and controversial about newspaper opinion sections and amplify it using generative AI. WaPo declined to provide comment for the NYT's exposé. It's worth noting that the NYT has been putting significant resources of its own into exploring how AI can be responsibly used in journalism -- but while it's using certain machine learning tools for tasks like finding patterns in large datasets, it's pledged not to use generative AI to write any articles. The revelation also comes during a period of broader crisis at WaPo, with significant layoffs coming as its owner Jeff Bezos has increasingly exerted control over the content and ideological leaning of the paper's journalism. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, eat your heart out.