The rule that governs everything below
A human editor is responsible for every published item. No tool changes that. Where AI assisted the production of an item, the human sign off, the verification and the accountability are unchanged.
Where AI is used
- Research assistance. Finding documents, summarising long filings and surfacing candidate stories for human assessment. Every fact that survives into a published piece is verified against the primary record by a person.
- Drafting assistance. Structuring and drafting text that is then edited, fact checked and approved by a human editor before publication.
- Editorial artwork. Original illustrations produced with generative image tools. These are credited to the Sox News Visual Desk and identified as AI assisted in the image credit.
- Production tasks. Transcription, tagging, alt text drafting, formatting and scheduling, all reviewed by a person.
Where AI is prohibited
- Generating a quotation, a source, a document, a statistic or a citation. Fabricated material is a dismissal level breach.
- Producing photorealistic imagery that could be mistaken for a photograph of a real event, place or person.
- Altering a photograph in any way that changes what it records, beyond standard crop, exposure and colour correction.
- Publishing any item without human verification and human sign off.
- Making a final judgement on whether to publish, on fairness, or on the outcome of a complaint.
- Reproducing another outlet's copy through a paraphrasing tool.
Disclosure
- AI assisted artwork carries a visible credit identifying it as AI assisted.
- Where AI materially shaped the substance of a piece rather than assisting its production, the piece says so.
- Automated production steps in our publishing system are documented in our editorial engine policy, and are subject to the same human sign off.
Data handling
Confidential source material and unpublished personal data are not entered into third party AI tools. Where a tool is used on sensitive material, it is a tool that does not retain or train on the input.
Review
This policy is reviewed as the tools change. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last revised.
Sox News is published by Sox Media LLC, a privately held Nevada limited liability company funded by private capital. Statutory company information is filed with the Nevada Secretary of State. No government, political party, foreign state, advertiser, sponsor, donor network, union, advocacy organisation or think tank controls editorial decisions at Sox News.