Sayer uses automated systems and artificial intelligence as tools inside its newsroom workflow. This page describes that work. It is a disclosure of method, not a claim that automation makes reporting complete, neutral, or error-free.

AI output is not evidence. Factual claims in a published report are supported, or not supported, by the underlying sources. A model can help locate, compare, organize, and draft from that material. It cannot stand in for the material.

Where automation is used

After a story is accepted for work on the desk, automated systems may be used to:

  • identify information relevant to the story
  • research the story and retrieve source material
  • find additional sources
  • extract claims and compare them across sources
  • flag contradictions, weak support, or circular repetition of the same account
  • organize the research record
  • draft article copy from that record
  • run editorial checks against the research record
  • adjust framing such as headline, dek, lead, and closing from existing verified material
  • prepare search metadata
  • prepare social-media versions of a finished report
  • search for and generate candidate images, subject to separate visual review

These steps are started from the newsroom. They are not a fully autonomous loop that finds, writes, and releases stories without the desk.

What automation does not do

Automated systems do not publish. A story must be approved, and then separately published, before it appears on this site. Both of those steps are actions taken on the desk. Publishing is never an automatic result of generating a draft.

The systems also do not:

  • treat another news article, by itself, as confirmation
  • invent quotations, statistics, names, dates, or URLs as a permitted method of work
  • release drafts, research packs, prompts, or internal scores to readers
  • post social copy to Facebook or other networks on their own

Review and publishing controls

After a draft is generated, it is checked against the research record. Those checks look for copy that is not supported by the gathered material, for quoted language or figures that do not appear in the record, and for internal desk language that should not reach readers. A later framing pass may propose changes to headline, dek, lead, or ending using only the existing verified material; it does not research the story again. If that pass fails, the existing draft is kept.

Before a story can be published, the desk process also blocks release when research is incomplete or failed, when a major claim is unsupported, when the assessment is that the story is false or unsupported, or when the copy still contains labels that mark it as unpublished or not for public release. Single-source stories that have not been independently confirmed are held in review rather than released as if they were settled.

Those controls are part of the publishing process. They are not the same thing as a journalist independently fact-checking every sentence by hand, and this page does not claim that every sentence receives a separate human line edit. Publication is not fully autonomous: a person on the desk controls the final publishing decision.

Images and social versions

Article images are handled separately from the text draft. The desk can search official, public-domain, and compatible Creative Commons libraries, import a chosen file, or generate an illustration. Placeholder or test artwork cannot appear on the public site. Approved images carry credit and license on the article when that information is on file. AI-generated illustrations are labeled as such.

Social-media versions are prepared from a finished, approved or published article when someone on the desk requests them. Generating that copy does not post it to a social network.

What readers see

Public articles show the headline, a publication byline of Sayer Staff, the publication date, an updated date when the story has been changed in a meaningful way, named sources, and image credit where it is required. They do not show internal prompts, private research notes, or other editorial working material.

For the editorial rules that govern wording, sourcing, and corrections, see editorial standards and the corrections policy. For what Sayer covers, see About Sayer.