CNN reports that newspaper chain Gannett “has paused the use of an AI tool to write high school sports dispatches after the technology made several major flubs in articles in at least one of its papers.”
In one notable example, preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the story began: “The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday….” The reports were mocked on social media for being repetitive, lacking key details, using odd language and generally sounding like they’d been written by a computer with no actual knowledge of sports.
CNN identified several other local Gannett outlets, including the Louisville Courrier Journal, AZ Central, Florida Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that have all published similar stories written by LedeAI in recent weeks. Many of the reports feature identical language, describing “high school football action,” noting when one team “took victory away from” another and describing “cruise-control” wins. In many cases, the stories also repeated the date of the games being covered multiple times in just a few paragraphs.
Gannett has paused its experiment with LedeAI in all of its local markets that had been using the service, according to the company. The pause was earlier reported by Axios… The AI tool debacle comes after Gannett axed hundreds of jobs in December when it laid off 6% of its news division.
From Axios’s report:
One such Dispatch article from Aug. 18 was blasted on social media for its robotic style, lack of player names and use of awkward phrases like “close encounter of the athletic kind.”
“I feel like I was there!” The Athletic senior columnist Jon Greenberg posted sarcastically.
More from the Washington Post:
Another story about a game between the Wyoming Cowboys and Ross Rams described a scoreboard that “was in hibernation in the fourth quarter.” When Ayersville High School staged a late comeback in another game, a write-up of their win read: “The Pilots avoided the brakes and shifted into victory gear….”
In a statement, Gannett called the deployment of Lede AI an “experiment” in automation to aid its journalists and add content for readers… LedeAI CEO Jay Allred said in a statement to The Post that he believes automation is part of the future of local newsrooms and that LedeAI allows reporters and editors to focus on “journalism that drives impact in the communities they serve.”
