‘Robotic’ Reviews Raise Concerns About AI-Generated Journalism at Gannett

Newspaper publishing titan Gannett has denied that reviews of consumer goods posted on Reviewed, part of USA Today, are AI-generated after journalism union the NewsGuild of New York called out the publisher on X for the posts.

In a thread on X, formerly Twitter, the NewsGuild of New York said the posts sounded "robotic," and were "shoddy AI consumer reviews." As an example, the union posted nearly identical reviews for a scuba mask and a drink tumbler. Gannett appeared to remove the content before putting it back up.

A spokesperson for Reviewed denied that the articles were AI generated. In a statement sent to The Messenger, they said the content was "created by third-party freelancers hired by a marketing agency partner, not AI." (The Messenger is trying to contact the marketing agency for comment.)

However, the spokesperson also added that they did not "meet our editorial standards."

"The pages were deployed without the accurate affiliate disclaimers and did not meet our editorial standards. We anticipate the updates will be published later today."

One of the broken standards appears to be Reviewed's commitment not to review products like dietary supplements, which the NewsGuild found on the site.

NewsGuild also called out that several post authors appear to have any connection to Gannett after a search on LinkedIn and Google, and the union questioned if they are real people. The Messenger was able to find other articles by one author published on another, non-Gannett-owned newspaper, however.

The Reviewed Union, a subchapter of the NewsGuild, as well as the NewsGuild of New York and the union’s national office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

This is not the first time AI has caused a stir at Gannett: In August, the publisher said it would pause a program whereby AI wrote sports reports for local newspapers after an AI-written article in the Columbus Dispatch went viral because it contained no information about the game or the players, confoundingly referred to the match as a "close encounter of the athletic kind."