Ghost in the Machine, Part 5: The Human Resistance
▼ Summary
– The series explores AI’s hidden role in journalism and the media’s trust crisis, with this installment focusing on union resistance to AI adoption.
– Newsroom unions are leading opposition against AI, framing it as an ethical crisis threatening journalistic integrity.
– Unions demand transparency and oversight, advocating for collaborative AI implementation discussions with management.
– Contract negotiations now include AI guardrails, such as preventing AI from displacing journalists or altering content without consent.
– Journalists fear AI could harm their reputations, especially when their bylines are attached to AI-generated or altered work.
This is the fifth installment in our six-part series, “Ghost in the Machine,” which explores the hidden use of artificial intelligence in journalism and the media’s growing trust crisis. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.
In the last part of our series, we examined the powerful economic forces driving media executives to adopt risky AI strategies, often at the expense of journalistic integrity. But as management has rushed to implement this technology from the top down, they have often been met with fierce internal resistance.
The most organized and vocal opposition has come from newsroom unions, which have emerged as a crucial line of defense for traditional journalistic ethics. This is not simply a story of labor versus management; it is a fight for the soul of journalism, pitting the logic of the factory against the values of the newsroom.
A “Horrified” Response
In case after case, the reaction from unionized journalists to the surreptitious use of AI has been one of shock and condemnation. When the Futurism report on Sports Illustrated broke, the SI Union issued a statement declaring they were “horrified” and that the practices described “violate everything we believe in about journalism”. They called the use of fake authors “disrespectful to our readers” and demanded management commit to basic journalistic standards. Similarly, when G/O Media began publishing AI-generated articles without consulting staff, the GMG Union condemned the move, warning that “unreliable AI programs notorious for creating falsehoods” threatened the credibility of their publications. This immediate and principled opposition framed the issue not as a labor dispute, but as an ethical crisis.
The Core Demands: Transparency and Oversight
Across the industry, news unions like The News Guild of New York and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) are mobilizing to counter the top-down imposition of AI. Their demands center on two key principles: transparency and oversight. Unions argue that the widespread lack of transparency from publishers about their AI plans has created a deep trust deficit with their own employees. Journalists often learn about major AI licensing deals or content experiments from external reports rather than their own management, fostering an atmosphere of suspicion. In response, unions are demanding a seat at the table, advocating for a collaborative process where management and labor discuss AI implementation together, in advance.
Bargaining for Guardrails
These demands are now being formalized at the bargaining table. Unions are actively pushing to include specific language about AI in their contracts to create binding guardrails. The union at Dow Jones, for instance, proposed contract language stating that the company will not “displace” its members by using AI tools like ChatGPT. The union at Insider successfully negotiated for a contract that ensures at least one union member is involved in conversations about using new technology like AI. At The Atlantic, after the magazine announced a deal with OpenAI, unionized writers presented a letter to management demanding the company “champion The Atlantic’s journalism by bringing a meaningful proposal on AI to the bargaining table”. These actions represent a concerted effort to move from reacting to scandals to proactively shaping the future of AI in their workplaces.
Protecting the Byline
A central concern for journalists is the potential for AI to damage their personal and professional reputations. The byline is a journalist’s currency, a mark of their work and credibility. The idea of having their name attached to AI-generated or AI-altered content without their consent is a profound threat. This fear was a key driver behind the unionization of CNET employees, who argued that the AI-generated content posed a direct danger to their professional reputations. One former CNET staffer went so far as to demand her byline be removed from the site entirely to protect her from future AI revisions. This protective instinct is also visible in the fight by the Law360 Union against a mandatory AI-powered “bias detection” tool. Reporters there argued that the tool, imposed by non-journalist executives, constituted editorial interference and forced them to act as product testers for their parent company, LexisNexis, potentially altering their work in ways that undermined their journalistic judgment.
In this landscape, where economic motives often override ethical considerations at the corporate level, organized labor has become a primary, and perhaps final, bulwark defending the core tenets of journalism. The ongoing struggle between newsroom unions and management over AI is more than a negotiation over technology; it is a proxy war for the future of the profession, a battle to ensure that human judgment, accountability, and authenticity remain at its heart.
Next up in Part 6: This fight between efficiency and ethics points to a critical question: How can AI be used responsibly? In our final post, we’ll chart a course forward.
