AI Disclosure

How Medway News uses AI

Medway News uses artificial intelligence tools to assist in producing local government coverage for Medway. This page explains what AI does and does not do in our newsroom.

What AI does

• Transcription: Public meeting videos are transcribed using AI speech-recognition software (Whisper) running on local hardware. These transcripts are the raw text record of what was said in a public meeting.
• Article drafting: AI generates draft articles from meeting transcripts, agendas, packets and minutes. The AI is instructed to follow AP style, attribute statements to named speakers, and ground every claim in the source documents.
• Headline generation: AI proposes candidate headlines for each article.

What AI does not do

• AI does not decide what to cover or what is newsworthy. Editorial judgment is human.
• AI does not contact sources, conduct interviews, or gather information beyond the public records it is given.
• AI does not publish articles. Every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication.
• AI does not write opinion, editorials, or endorsements.

Human editorial review

Every AI-drafted article is reviewed by a human editor who checks it against the source documents, verifies names and titles against official committee rosters, corrects errors, and decides whether to publish. The editor may revise, rewrite, or reject any draft.

Transparency

We include a disclosure on social media posts noting that our drafting is AI-assisted with human editorial review. We believe readers should know how their news is produced.

Questions

If you have questions about our use of AI, please email support@townbrief.com.