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Whether journalists should use artificial intelligence to write stories has become one of the sharpest fault lines in modern newsrooms. Some editors see AI as a useful tool; others fear a gradual erosion of authorship, accountability and trust.<\/p>\n
News organisations are increasingly relying on AI for routine tasks while trying to preserve public confidence in journalism. As publishers draw different boundaries around acceptable use, the question is becoming less about the technology itself than about who is responsible for the finished work.<\/p>\n
Der Spiegel has now taken one of the industry’s toughest positions. In an essay, editor-in-chief Dirk Kurbjuweit said the magazine will not allow AI to write or rewrite its journalism.<\/p>\n
Kurbjuweit said the newsroom had wrestled with how far AI should be allowed to assist reporters and whether machine-generated passages were acceptable if a story remained substantially human-made. His conclusion was that journalists should not hand over the act of writing to a machine.<\/p>\n
The broader concern, he argued, is responsibility. If a story is no longer written by the journalist whose byline appears on it, who owns the work and who carries the blame when it goes wrong?<\/p>\n
Some newsroom unions are pressing for guarantees on human oversight, disclosure and job protection. At the same time, some publishers have resisted locking AI commitments into contracts because the technology is evolving so quickly. High-profile AI errors, including fabricated quotations and factual mistakes, have only deepened scepticism. The result is a familiar dilemma: readers increasingly want transparency about AI use, yet disclosure can itself undermine confidence in the finished article.<\/p>\n
Der Spiegel’s policy places it at the restrictive end of current newsroom practice. Other publishers have taken a more permissive approach. Business Insider, for example, has allowed journalists to use AI to help draft copy, provided the published article remains entirely the reporter’s own work, according to reporting on its internal guidance.<\/p>\n
Supporters argue that AI can speed up routine work without replacing editorial judgement. Critics counter that once a machine begins shaping a story’s language, the boundary becomes difficult to enforce.<\/p>\n
The concern extends beyond journalism. The Atlantic recently highlighted a series of writing scandals in which authors blamed AI-generated falsehoods and misattributed quotations on tools such as ChatGPT. The cases have reinforced a broader debate about the difference between using AI as an assistant and allowing it to shape the substance, structure and accuracy of a piece. For journalists, that distinction is especially important because credibility is the core product.<\/p>\n
There is also a commercial argument beneath the ethical one. AI may produce cleaner, faster prose, but that does not mean readers will value it more. Human writing, Kurbjuweit argued, offers qualities that are harder to replicate: judgement, personality, temperament and lived experience. The industry is still deciding whether those qualities remain a competitive advantage or become a luxury in an AI-assisted future.<\/p>\n