R
It should be cut & dry.
Restate your policy on AI generated content.
State you are doing an investigation.
Then move on.
This particular wording leaves room for excuses for the continued use of AI summarizers/ writing assistants.
I'm not saying to actually do anything over the weekend.
I'm aware of Condé Nas's internal policies when an article gets pulled from Ars, there's a formal investigation to avoid slandering the writer & chain of trust their work passed through.
@Gaelan
Strategic ambiguity is what this *appears* to be, it's the calculated vague speak that allows for plausible deniability that gets me.
Also, news cycles: Friday news dumps allow stories to die over the weekend. Pushing the response back isn't just about the holiday, it’s about waiting for the news cycle. They're betting that by Tuesday, the "outrage" will have lost its momentum, making vague statements easier to swallow.
I know they have internal processes for this, but not a good look.
Was AI used to generate this content? (Yes/No)
Does Ars have a strict "No-AI" policy for editorial content? (Yes/No)
If the answer to both is "Yes," how did the internal vetting process fail?
Regardless of a holiday, "I don't know what we'll be able to say" implies negotiation with the truth. For a publication built on facts, the only thing to "say" is the truth of what happened. The longer the silence, the more it looks like calibrating an excuse rather than admitting a failure.
@dusk @cR0w @mttaggart @iampytest1
"…I don't know what we'll be able to say, so I don't want to over-promise anything…"
You say, 'We won't use AI to write our publication'
There's nothing else to say.
There's no promises to be made.
Ars prides itself on technical accuracy. AI slop is a direct hit to their identity. The longer they wait to give a straight answer, the more it *appears* like they're trying to figure out how much they can get away with, instead of just being bluntly transparent.
