Stuff and the machines - our policy on generative AI

Friday, 14 February 2025

Keith Lynch is Stuff’s Editor in Chief.

Over the past year the potential of generative AI has rapidly moved from the lips of futurists to the hands of all of us.

AI tools are now being widely used in every walk of life.

Here at Stuff we see that AI tools can enhance journalism and the experience for audiences while improving productivity, but also create risks that must be mitigated.

We’ve been considering the possibilities, pitfalls and pratfalls.

Make Aotearoa better

It’s a no brainer - any use of any technology must be consistent with our overarching company mission to help make Aotearoa better. This means it must enhance our journalism and the resulting public benefit and impact.

We’ll keep you in the know.

We want to be clear and transparent with you, our audience - our readers, viewers and listeners around how we’re using AI to support our journalism.

So this is where we are at.

As you know, we’re committed to keeping you up to date with what’s happening in New Zealand right now. For example, when cop cars scream past your house, you know you can check stuff.co.nz to see what’s up.

Often this reporting involves relaying publicly available information like emergency service press releases to you as soon as it’s made available.

This kind of reporting often requires minimal intervention—just timely, accurate information delivered to our audiences as quickly as possible. That’s why we’re exploring the use of AI to streamline this coverage, ensuring we can deliver key updates faster and more efficiently.

Using AI to summarise content allows us to focus our reporting resources on more rewarding journalism - for both us and our audience.

AI cannot go out onto the streets and speak to people, it can’t work sources to get vital information, it cannot sit in court, it cannot break a story, nor can it imaginatively analyse or investigate a pertinent issue.

It can’t do the reporting you see below:

Similarly, we’re also experimenting with using AI to provide summaries of publicly available documents.

And we’re using AI to summarise our live blogs to make life easier for our readers.

And as you know we use AI to create the ‘Fast Facts’ you see on our reporting. You can read more about that here.

Human oversight is a non-negotiable

There’s no blaming the machines. Any AI-generated content will be held to the same standards and codes as content written by our professional journalists. And ensuring these standards are met is the responsibility of a human. That means the publishing editor, news director, producer or content creator.

And another thing: Content must adhere to the requirements of New Zealand law and the principles of the New Zealand Media Council, Advertising Standards Authority and to Stuff’s Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics and Stuff’s Charter.

Equity, fairness and inclusion are at our core

Some AI tools in use internationally have been found to exhibit unfair and discriminatory outputs which can exacerbate existing inequities for marginalised groups.

This is never OK with us.

If AI tools are used in our newsroom or business we will be mindful of these risks. We will seek to always take a multi-lens approach to the use of AI.

Sources and IP protection are as important as ever

Content can only be published when source material has been checked and verified. This means, as always, our journalism is based on verified facts.

And source checking ensures we do not improperly use the intellectual property of others. Our own IP and copyright is important to us - and we respect the intellectual property of others.

What next?

There are many ways we’re experimenting with AI and generative AI, or think there are possibilities.

Stuff Ltd has already trialed using a tool to help support reporting of local government.

We’ll be looking at how AI can help with areas as diverse as headline writing, social media curation, graphic generation, data analysis, data visualisation, interview transcription, video and image cataloguing, text to voice, story generation from data, story curation, and automated page layouts. We’ll look at using AI to create a range of multimedia storytelling formats.

We have been publishing uninterrupted in this country for more than 165 years and have embraced wave after wave of technological change, always committed to using the best of technologies to create modern, relevant and essential journalism that makes a positive difference to New Zealand. We’ll keep you up to date here.