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How Poynter reported the AI plagiarism story that rattled journalism

Poynter · Tom Jones · last updated

In the latest episode of ‘The Poynter Report Podcast,’ we break down how the Nota story came together and what it means for trust in AI

Earlier this month, my Poynter colleague Angela Fu published a story that kicked up a hornet’s nest in the journalism and artificial intelligence world: “An AI company set out to fix news deserts. Instead, it copied local journalists’ work.”

Fu wrote that an AI company called Nota, whose clients included organizations like The Boston Globe and the Institute for Nonprofit News, scrapped its network of local news sites after learning that they contained dozens of instances of plagiarism.

How did the story come about? How were all the instances of plagiarism discovered? What has been the reaction in the AI community? What is happening with Nota?

 

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