[HN Gopher] A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on ...
___________________________________________________________________
A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated
news content
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 485 points
Date : 2026-02-06 09:56 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niemanlab.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niemanlab.org)
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| In 10-20 years all this AI disclaimer stuff is going to be like
| 'don't use wikipedia, it could lie!'
|
| Status Quo Bias is a real thing, and we are seeing those people
| in meltdown with the world changing around them. They think
| avoiding AI, putting disclaimers on it, etc... will matter. But
| they aren't being rational, they are being emotional.
|
| The economic value is too high to stop and the cat is out of the
| bag with 400B models on local computers.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| AI-written articles tend to be far more regurgitative, lower in
| value, and easier to ghostwrite with intent to manipulate the
| narrative.
|
| Economic value or not, AI-generated content should be labeled,
| and trying to pass it as human-written should be illegal,
| regardless of how used to AI content people do or don't become.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| My theory is that AI writes the way it does because it was
| trained on a lot of modern (organic) journalism.
|
| So many words to say so little, just so they can put ads
| between every paragraph.
| charcircuit wrote:
| That is low quality articles in general. Have you never seen
| how hundreds of news sites will regurgitate the same story of
| another. This was happening long before AI. High quality AI
| written articles will still be high value.
| orwin wrote:
| Did you go on grokipedia at release? I still sometimes
| loose myself reading stuff on Wikipedia, I guarantee you
| that this can't happen on grok, so much noise between facts
| it's hard to enjoy.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Yes I did go immediately on release. I was finally able
| to correct articles that have been inaccurate on
| Wikipedia for years.
| orwin wrote:
| So you noticed how poor the prose was? Really unbearable
| to read.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I found it fine to read and it handled controversial
| subjects much better than Wikipedia.
| orwin wrote:
| I don't care about that, that wasn't the point, no one
| truly care about that. I wanted to know if the feeling of
| reading meandering writing that can't go to the point
| when reading AI-generated content was only mine, or if
| other people who "wiki walk" a lot did the same on
| Grokipedia (basically spend hours clicking on links and
| reading random pages). I didn't manage to do it because
| the writing was too "bad" for me (and i was taken by wiki
| walk on wookiepedia once, so my tolerance is high). I
| just wanted to know if it was shared. Did you wiki walk
| on grokipedia, or do you just use it for "controversial
| subjects"?
| simion314 wrote:
| Emotional my ass, just have websites and social media give me a
| filter to hide AI stuff , I can't enjoy a video , post or story
| anymore since I always doubt it is real, if I am part of a
| minority this filter should not hit the budget of companies and
| would encourage real people generated content if we are larger
| then a dozen people.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't think that's true. The 'this battle is already over'
| attitude is the most defeatist strategy possible. It's
| effectively complying in advance, rolling over before you've
| attempted to create the best possible outcome.
|
| With that attitude we would not have voting, human rights (for
| what they're worth these days), unions, a prohibition on
| slavery and tons of other things we take for granted every day.
|
| I'm sure AI has its place but to see it assume the guise of
| human output without any kind of differentiating factor has so
| many downsides that it is worth trying to curb the excesses.
| And news articles in particular should be free from
| hallucinations because they in turn will cause others to pass
| those on. Obviously with the quality of some publications you
| could argue that that is an improvement but it wasn't always so
| and a free and capable press is a precious thing.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _With that attitude we would not have voting, human rights
| (for what they 're worth these days), unions, a prohibition
| on slavery and tons of other things we take for granted every
| day._
|
| None of these things were rolling back a technology. History
| shows that technology is a ratchet, the only way to get rid
| of a technology is social collapse or surplanting the
| technology with something even more useful or at the very
| least approximately as useful but safer.
|
| Once a technology has proliferated, it's a fiat accompli. You
| can regulate the technology but turning the clock back isn't
| going to happen.
| jacquesm wrote:
| We have plenty of examples of regulated technology.
|
| And usually the general public does not have a direct stake
| in the outcome (ok, maybe broadcast spectrum regulation
| should be mentioned there), but this time they do and given
| what's at stake it may well be worth trying to define what
| a good set of possible outcomes would be and how to get
| there.
|
| As I mentioned above and which TFA is all about, the press
| for instance could be held to a standard that they have
| shown they can easily meet in the past.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| As I said, technology can be regulated. And this
| technology _will_ be regulated.
|
| However the technology is nonetheless here to stay, until
| it's replaced with something better.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Well they aren't free from hallucinations with human authors.
| Not to long ago there was an outbreak of articles in the
| "reputable" mainstream press claiming that there was a foiled
| terrorist plot against the UN which was actually (and
| obviously) a garden variety SMS fraud operation. Why should I
| care if it's AI lying to me next time rather than the
| constant deluge of humans lying to me?
| wiseowise wrote:
| > But they aren't being rational, they are being emotional.
|
| When your mind is so fried on slop that you start to write like
| one.
|
| > The economic value is too high to stop and the cat is out of
| the bag with 400B models on local computers.
|
| Look at all this value created like *checks notes* scam ads,
| apps that undress women and teenage girls, tech bros jerking
| each other off on twitter, flooding open source with tsunami of
| low quality slop, inflating chip prices, thousands are cut off
| in cost savings and dozens more.
|
| Cat is out of the bag for sure.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| You may not like it, but this is what peak economic
| performance looks like.
| blibble wrote:
| no, this is what massive subsidy looks like
| duskdozer wrote:
| Current AI use is heavily subsidized; we will see how much
| value there actually is when it comes time to monetize.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| Ideally, trying to pass _anything_ AI-generated as human-made
| content would be illegal, not just news, but it 's a good start.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fully agreed.
| xnorswap wrote:
| That could do more harm than good.
|
| Like how California's bylaw about cancer warnings are useless
| because it makes it look like _everything_ is known to the
| state of California to cause cancer, which in turn makes people
| just ignore and tune-out the warnings because they 're not
| actually delivering signal-to-noise. This in turn harms people
| when they think, "How bad can tobacco be? Even my Aloe Vera
| plant has a warning label".
|
| Keep it to generated news articles, and people might pay more
| attention to them.
|
| Don't let the AI lobby insist on anything that's touched an LLM
| getting labelled, because if it gets slapped on anything that's
| even passed through a spell-checker or saved in Notepad (
| somehow this is contaminated, lol ), then it'll become a
| useless warning.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Imagine selling a product with the tagline: "Unlike Pepsi,
| ours _doesn 't_ cause cancer."
| SkyBelow wrote:
| It is worse, even less than useless. With the California
| case, there is very little go gain by lying and not putting a
| sticker on items that should have one. With AI generated
| content, as the models get to the point we can't tell anymore
| if it is fake, there are plenty of reasons to pass off a fake
| as real, and conditioning people to expect an AI warning will
| make them more likely to fall for content that ignores this
| law and doesn't label itself.
| cardanome wrote:
| > Don't let the AI lobby insist on anything that's touched an
| LLM getting labelled, because if it gets slapped on anything
| that's even passed through a spell-checker or saved in
| Notepad
|
| People have been writing articles without the help of an LLM
| for decades.
|
| You don't need an LLM for grammar and spell checking,
| arguably an LLM is less efficient and currently worse at it
| anyway.
|
| The biggest help a LLM can provide is with research but that
| is only because search engines have been artificially
| enshitified these day. But even here the usefulness is very
| limited because of hallucinations. So you might be better off
| without.
|
| There is no proof that LLMs can significantly improve the
| workflow of a professional journalist when it comes to
| creating high quality content.
|
| So no, don't believe the hype. There will still be enough
| journalists not using LLMs at all.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| > That could do more harm than good.
|
| The downside to having labels on AI-written political
| comments, stellar reviews of bad products, speeches by a
| politician, or supposed photos of wonderful holiday
| destinations in ads targeted at old people are what, exactly?
|
| Are you really arguing that putting a label on AI generated
| content could do more harm than just leaving it
| (approximately) indistinguishable from the real thing might
| somehow be worse?
|
| I'm not arguing that we need to label anything that used gen
| AI in any capacity, but past the point of e.g. minor edits,
| yeah, it should be labeled.
| terminalshort wrote:
| None of those AI written political comments will have the
| label added because it's unprovable, and those propaganda
| shops are based well outside of the necessary jurisdiction
| anyway. It will just be a burden on legitimate actors and a
| way for the government to harass legitimate media outlets
| that it doesn't like with expensive "AI usage
| investigations."
| elric wrote:
| I bought a piece of wooden furniture some time ago. It came
| with a label saying that the state of California knows it to
| be a carcinogen. I live in Belgium. It was weird.
| bogwog wrote:
| Just an observation, but this California meme seems like
| the go-to talking point for anti AI regulation crowd
| lately.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| It's not even a good argument. Studies have demonstrated
| it reduces toxic chemicals in the body, and also deters
| companies from using the toxic chemicals in their
| products.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| > Like how California's bylaw about cancer warnings are
| useless
|
| Californians have measurably lower concentrations of toxic
| chemicals than non-California's, so very useless!
| pezgrande wrote:
| Where we put the line within AI-generate vs AI-assisted (aka
| Photoshop and other tools)?
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| How do we know what's AI-generated vs. sloppy human work? Of
| course in some situations it is obvious (e.g., video), but
| text? Audio?
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| And of course you can even ask AI to add some "human
| sloppiness" as part of the prompt (spelling mistakes, run-on
| sentences, or whatever).
| sekai wrote:
| > Ideally, trying to pass anything AI-generated as human-made
| content would be illegal, not just news, but it's a good start.
|
| Does photoshop fall under this category?
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Spell check, autocomplete, grammar editing, A-B tests for
| bylines and photo use, related stories, viewers also read,
| tag generation
|
| I guess you have to disclose every single item on your new
| site that does anything like this. Any byte that touches a
| stochastic process is tainted forever.
| b40d-48b2-979e wrote:
| None of those things are "AI" (LLMs). We had those things
| before, we'll have them after.
| infecto wrote:
| Please no. I don't want that kind of future. It's going to be
| California cancer warnings all over again.
|
| I don't like AI slop but this kind of legislation does nothing.
| Look at the low quality garbage that already exists, do we
| really need another step in the flow to catch if it's AI?
|
| You legislate these problems away.
| driverdan wrote:
| What does that mean though? Photos taken using mobile camera
| apps are processed using AI. Many Photoshop tools now use AI.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| Obviously it should not apply to anything using machine
| learning based algorithms in any way, just content made using
| generative AI, with exceptions for minor applications and/or
| a separate label for smaller edits.
| patrick451 wrote:
| Ideally, we would just ban AI content altogether.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| I don't think there's any way for that to happen, and IF we
| could create a solid legislative framework, AI could
| definitely (at some point in the future) contribute more good
| than bad to society.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| Publishing is more than just authoring. You have research,
| drafts, edits, source verification, voice, formatting, multiple
| edits for different platforms and mediums. Each one of those
| steps could be done by AI. It's not a single-shot process.
| rasjani wrote:
| Finnish public broadcasting company YLE has same rule. Even if
| they do cleanups of still images, they need to mark that article
| has AI generated content.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Do they find that fewer people read articles that were written
| by humans but have that label slapped on for the photo vs a
| baseline?
|
| If not: I suspect fewer people may care and so what's the point
| of the label?
|
| If so: why would they continue to use Ai solely to clean up
| photos?
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Oregon kind of already has this they just don't enforce their
| laws.
| mothballed wrote:
| Oregon and New York both are still trying to work their way up
| the 'rule of law' pyramid past the base level of stopping
| fetnanyl and meth heads from robbing convenience stores and
| parked cars. Every moment spent on enforcing AI disclaimers
| instead is an affront to the populace.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I'm well aware. I left Oregon 3 weeks ago and live in DC.
| Junkies spit on your wife and children while the police watch
| and say "not enough spit landed" and refuse to arrest anyone.
| When your property is stolen they will look at you like
| you're crazy for wanting it investigated or recovered. It has
| a tracker in it and the device says it's in that pile of
| stolen stuff near those tweakers. Good riddance Oregon!
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Oregonians
| have more personal freedom than almost any other state. Ron
| Wyden is by far the best sitting senator. It's a remarkably
| pro-gun state for being so left wing. Just use your tech
| bro money and live in a suburb. Cheapest weed in America.
| legalish shrooms. It's harder here than almost anywhere
| else for cops to fk your life up. Good.
|
| Also it's objectively very low on violent crime, and the
| problems you talk about are in every PNW city, i.e. SF,
| Portland, Vancouver (WA), Vancouver (BC), Seattle. They're
| also the places where all the innovation, including AI
| (despite the non SF cities hatred for it), is happening.
| wateralien wrote:
| They need to enforce this with very large fines.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I'm worried that this will lead to a Prop 65 [0] situation, where
| eventually everything gets flagged as having used AI in some
| form. Unless it suddenly becomes a premium feature to have 100%
| human written articles, but are people really going to pay for
| that?
|
| > substantially composed, authored, or created through the use of
| generative artificial intelligence
|
| The lawyers are gonna have a field day with this one. This
| wording makes it seem like you could do light editing and proof-
| reading without disclosing that you used AI to help with that.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| At least it would be possible to autofilter everything out.
| Maybe market will somehow make it possible for non-AI content
| to get some spotlight because of that.
| em500 wrote:
| > I'm worried that this will lead to a Prop 65 [0] situation,
| where eventually everything gets flagged as having used AI in
| some form.
|
| This is very predictably what's going to happen, and it will be
| just as useless as Prop 65 or the EU cookie laws or any other
| mandatory disclaimers.
| layer8 wrote:
| The EU ePrivacy directive isn't about disclaimers.
| consp wrote:
| The problem is people believe it is. People believe the
| advertisement industry narrative they are force to show the
| insane screens and have to make it difficult. Yet they are
| not, and a reject all must be as easy as accept all (and
| "legitimate reasons" do not exist, they are either allowed
| uses and you don't have to ask or they are not).
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Manufacturers also have the choice to avoid carcinogens
| but they don't.
| codewench wrote:
| How is that useless? You adding the warning tells me
| everything I need to know.
|
| Either you generated it with AI, in which case I can happily
| skip it, or you _don't know_ if AI was used, in which case
| you clearly don't care about what you produce, and I can skip
| it.
|
| The only concern then is people who use AI and don't apply
| this warning, but given how easy it is to identify AI
| generated materials you just have to have a good '1-strike'
| rule and be judicious with the ban hammer.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Because you have to be able to prove it wasn't AI when the
| law is tested, and keeping records and proof you didn't use
| AI is going to be really difficult, if at all possible. For
| little people having fun, unless you poke the wrong bear,
| it won't matter. But for companies who are constantly the
| target of lawsuits, expect there to be a new field of
| unlabeled AI trolling comparable to patent trolling or
| similar.
|
| We already see this with the California label, it get's
| applied to things that don't cause cancer because putting
| the label on is much cheaper than going through to the
| process to prove that some random thing doesn't cause
| cancer.
|
| If the government showed up and claimed your comment was AI
| generated and you had to prove otherwise, how would you?
| shimman wrote:
| "One regulation was kinda bad, so we should never
| regulate anything again."
|
| Good god, this is pathetic. Do you financially gain from
| AI or do you think it's hard to prove someone didn't use
| it? Like this is the bare minimum and you're throwing
| temper tantrums...
|
| The onus will be on the AI companies pushing these wares
| to follow regulations. If it makes it harder for the end
| user to use these wares, well too bad so sad.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >"One regulation was kinda bad, so we should never
| regulate anything again."
|
| Please don't misrepresent what someone says. That does
| not lead to constructive dialog.
|
| I gave a question challenging a specific way to regulate
| a specific thing, to indicate it is challenging. This is
| not the same as dismissing all regulations.
|
| Also, please avoid the personal mentions.
|
| >The onus will be on the AI companies pushing these wares
| to follow regulations.
|
| That wasn't the challenge. The raised issue isn't AI
| companies labeling things AI. The given example included
| them very much following the regulation.
| mold_aid wrote:
| I think a lot of people are asking the question around many
| digital services; I'm pretty sure in areas like education and
| media "no AI!" is going to be something that rich people look
| for, sure.
|
| Editing and proofreading are "substantial" elements of
| authorship. Hope these laws include criminal penalties for
| "it's not just this - it's that!" "we seized Tony Dokoupil's
| computer and found Grammarly installed," right, straight to
| jail
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| seems like prop 65 works well
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/02/12/...
|
| > The study, published Wednesday in Environmental Science &
| Technology, found that California's right-to-know law, also
| known as Proposition 65, has effectively swayed dozens of
| companies from using chemicals known to cause cancer,
| reproductive harm or birth defects.
|
| ...
|
| > Researchers interviewed 32 businesses from a variety of
| sectors including personal care, clothing and health care,
| concluding that the law has led manufacturers to remove toxic
| chemicals from their products. And the impact is significant:
| 78 percent of interviewees said Proposition 65 prompted them to
| reformulate their ingredients; 81 percent of manufacturers said
| the law tells them which chemicals to avoid; 69 percent said it
| promotes transparency about ingredients and the supply chain.
| asah wrote:
| We've seen this movie - see California prop 65 warnings on
| literally every building.
|
| It also doesn't work to penalize fraudulent warnings - they
| simply include a harmless bit of AI to remain in compliance.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > It also doesn't work to penalize fraudulent warnings
|
| How would you classify fraudulent warnings? "Hey chatgpt, does
| this text look good to you? LGTM. Ship it".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The smell of Harbor Freight stores from before prop 65 compared
| to now indicates that it did work.
| VMG wrote:
| Step 2: outlets slap this disclaimer on all content, regardless
| of AI usage, making it useless
|
| Step 3: regulator prohibits putting label on content that is not
| AI generated
|
| Step 4: outlets make sure to use AI for all content
|
| Let's call it the "Sesame effect"
| jacquesm wrote:
| Or
|
| Step 1: those outlets that actually do the work see an increase
| in subscribers.
| orwin wrote:
| Alternative timeline
|
| Step 2.5: 'unlike those news outlets, all our work is verified
| by humans'
|
| Step 3: work as intended.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| This would be an improvement in my book.
|
| I'm a data journalist, and I use AI in some of my work (data
| processing, classification, OCR, etc.). I always disclose it in
| a "Methodology" section in the story. I wouldn't trust any
| reporting that didn't disclose the use of AI, and if an outlet
| slapped a disclaimer on their entire site, I wouldn't trust
| that outlet.
| terminalshort wrote:
| So every time a reporter researches something and does a
| Google search and Gemini results pop up now AI use has to be
| added to the methodology section and basically 100% of all
| articles have the "AI use" label attached.
| charcircuit wrote:
| So literally every article will be labeled as AI assisted and it
| will be meaningless.
|
| >The use of generative artificial intelligence systems shall not
| result in: (i) discharge, displacement or loss of position
|
| Being able to fire employees is a great use of AI and should not
| be restricted.
|
| > or (ii) transfer of existing duties and functions previously
| performed by employees or worker
|
| Is this saying you can't replace an employee's responsibilities
| with AI? No wonder the article says it is getting union support.
| vincnetas wrote:
| objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _So literally every article will be labeled as AI assisted
| and it will be meaningless._
|
| The web novel website RoyalRoad has two different tags that
| stories can/should add: AI-Assisted and AI-Generated.
|
| Their policy: https://www.royalroad.com/blog/57/royal-road-ai-
| text-policy
|
| > In this policy, we are going to separate the use of AI for
| text, into 3 categories: General Assistive Technologies, AI-
| Assisted, AI-Generated
|
| The first category does not require tagging the story, only the
| other two do.
|
| > The new tags are as such:
|
| > AI-Assisted: The author has used an AI tool for editing or
| proofreading. The story thus reflects the author's creativity
| and structure, but it may use the AI's voice and tone. There
| may be some negligible amount of snippets generated by AI.
|
| > AI-Generated: The story was generated using an AI tool; the
| author prompted and directed the process, and edited the
| result.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > So literally every article will be labeled as AI assisted and
| it will be meaningless.
|
| That at might at least offer an opportunity for a news source
| to compete on not being AI-generated. I would personally be
| willing to pay for information sources that exclude AI-
| generated content.
| westmeal wrote:
| How would you feel if an AI hallucinated and fired you from
| your job?
| charcircuit wrote:
| I would feel that I must not have been documenting my value
| as good as I could have been and would try and do so better
| at my next job.
| westmeal wrote:
| That's genuinely insane but you're entitled to your
| opinion.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| > Being able to fire employees is a great use of AI and should
| not be restricted.
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
| charcircuit wrote:
| There is less bias being able to have an AI measure who is
| being productive and who isn't. Getting signal from AI when
| measuring performance to know when to fire people will be a
| valuable signal.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| Do you think that LLMs are not biased / less biased than
| humans?
| padolsey wrote:
| I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation news
| here tbh. Maybe there's an apathy and exhaustion to it. But if
| you're developing AI stuff, you need to keep on top of this. This
| is a pretty pivotal moment. NY has been busy with RAISE (frontier
| AI safety protocols, audits, incident reporting), S8420A (must
| disclose AI-generated performers in ads), GBL Article 47 (crisis
| detection & disclaimers for AI chatbots), S7676B (protects
| performers from unauthorized AI likenesses), NYC LL144 (bias
| audits for AI hiring tools), SAFE for Kids Act [pending]
| (restricts algorithmic feeds for minors). At least three of those
| are relevant even if your app only _serves_ people in NY. It
| doesn't matter where you're based. That's just one US state's
| laws on AI.
|
| It's kinda funny the oft-held animosity towards EU's heavy-handed
| regulations when navigating US state law is a complete minefield
| of its own.
| vasco wrote:
| ~Everything will use AI at some point. This is like requiring a
| disclaimer for using Javascript back when it was introduced.
| It's unfortunate but I think ultimately a losing battle.
|
| Plus if you want to mandate it, hidden markers (stenography) to
| verify which model generated the text so people can
| independently verify if articles were written by humans
| (emitted directly by the model) is probably the only feasible
| way. But its not like humans are impartial anyway already when
| writing news so I don't even see the point of that.
| layer8 wrote:
| It would make sense to have a more general law about
| accountability for the contents of news. If news is
| significantly misleading or plagiarizing, it shouldn't matter
| if it is due to the use of AI or not, the human editorship
| should be liable in either case.
|
| This is a concept at least in some EU countries, that there
| has to always be one person responsible in terms of press law
| for what is being published.
| vasco wrote:
| I agree with that the most. That's why I added the bit
| about humans. In the end if what you're writing is not
| sourced properly or too biased it shouldn't matter if AI is
| involved or not. The truth is more the thing that matters
| with news.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| That would bankrupt every news organisation in the USA.
| _blk wrote:
| Seems like a good idea then
| mothballed wrote:
| If a news person in the USA publishes something that's
| actually criminal, the the corporate veil can be pierced.
| If the editor printed CSAM they would be in prison lickity
| split. Unless they have close connections to the executive.
|
| Most regulations around disclaimers in the USA are just
| civil and the corporate veil won't be pierced.
| terminalshort wrote:
| That's government censorship and it not allowed here,
| unlike the EU. As for plagiarism, every single major news
| outlet is guilty of it in basically every single article.
| Have you ever seen the NYT cite a source?
| jMyles wrote:
| > I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation
| news here tbh.
|
| I think the reason is that most people don't believe, at least
| on sufficiently long times scales, that legacy states are
| likely to be able to shape AI (or for that matter, the
| internet). The legitimacy of the US state appears to be in a
| sort of free-fall, for example.
|
| It takes a long time to fully (or even mostly) understand the
| various machinations of legislative action (let alone executive
| discretion, and then judicial interpretation), and in that
| time, regardless of what happens in various capitol buildings,
| the tests pass and the code runs - for better and for worse.
|
| And even amidst a diversity of views/assessments of the future
| of the state, there seems to be near consensus regarding the
| underlying impetus: obviously humans and AI are distinct, and
| hearing the news from a human, particular a human with a strong
| web-of-trust connection in your local society, is massively
| more credible. What's not clear is whether states have a role
| to play in lending clarity to the situation, or whether that
| will happen of the internet's accord.
| raincole wrote:
| > I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation
| news here tbh.
|
| Because no one believes these laws or bills or acts or whatever
| will be enforced.
|
| But I actually believe they'll be. In the worst way possible:
| honest players will be punished disproportionally.
| cheschire wrote:
| Yeah it's like that episode of schoolhouse rock about how a
| bill becomes a law now takes place in squid games.
| razingeden wrote:
| >But I wonder who that sad little scrap of 8,523 pieces of
| paper is?
| just_once wrote:
| What does that look like? Can you describe your worst case
| scenario?
| amelius wrote:
| Worst case? Armed officers entering your home without
| warrant, taking away your GPU card?
| just_once wrote:
| They can do that anyway. What does that have to do with
| the content of the proposed law?
| jandrese wrote:
| Highly selective enforcement along partisan lines to
| suppress dissent. Government officials forcing you to prove
| that your post is not AI generated if they don't like it.
| Those same officials claiming that it is AI generated
| regardless of the facts on the ground to have it removed
| and you arrested.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| If you assume the use of law will be that capricious in
| general, then any law at all would be considered too
| dangerous for fear of use as a partisan tool.
|
| Why accuse your enemies of using AI-generated content in
| posts? Just call them domestic terrorists for violently
| misleading the public via the content of their posts and
| send the FBI or DHS after them. A new law or lack thereof
| changes nothing.
| padolsey wrote:
| > Because no one believes these laws or bills or acts or
| whatever will be enforced.
|
| Time will tell. Texas' sat on its biometric data act quite
| quietly then hammered meta with a $1.4B settlement 20 years
| after the bill's enactment. Once these laws are enacted, they
| lay quietly until someone has a big enough bone to pick with
| someone else. There are already many traumatic events
| occurring downstream from slapdash AI development.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Meta made $60B in Q4 2025. A one-time $1.4B fine, 20 years
| after enactment, is not "getting hammered".
| Retric wrote:
| They didn't make $60B in Q4 2025 in Texas. 1.4B was 100%
| profit from Texas for years, that a big fine.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Big for Texas, not for Meta.
| Retric wrote:
| It's under 5 hours of GDP for Texas. It's a big fine, but
| not a huge deal for either party.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You also have to ask "how much is _the specific thing in
| the lawsuit_ worth to Meta? "
|
| I don't know how much automatically opting everyone in to
| automatic photo tagging made Meta, but I assume its "less
| than 100% of their revenue".
|
| Barring the point of contention being integral to the
| business's revenue model or management of the company
| being infected with oppositional defiant disorder a
| lawsuit is just an opportunity for some middle manager +
| team to get praised for making a revenue-negative change
| that reduces the risk of future fines.
|
| Work like that is a gold mind; several people will
| probably get promoted for it.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That's even worse, because then it's not really a law, it's
| a license for political persecution of anyone disfavored by
| whoever happens to be in power.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Never mind the damage that was willfully allowed to
| happen that the bill was supposed to protect from
| happening.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| > Texas' sat on its biometric data act quite quietly then
| hammered meta with a $1.4B settlement 20 years after the
| bill's enactment.
|
| Sounds like ignoring it worked fine for them then.
| jandrese wrote:
| That sounds like it will be in the courts for ages before
| Facebook wins on selective prosecution.
| crimsonsupe wrote:
| > Because no one believes these laws or bills or acts or
| whatever will be enforced.
|
| That's because they can't be.
|
| People assume they've already figured out how AI behaves and
| that they can just mandate specific "proper" ways to use it.
|
| The reality is that AI companies and users are going to keep
| refining these tools until they're indistinguishable from
| human work whenever they want them to be.
|
| Even if the models still make mistakes, the idea that you can
| just ban AI from certain settings is a fantasy because
| there's no technical way to actually guarantee enforcement.
|
| You're essentially passing laws that only apply to people who
| volunteer to follow them, because once someone decides to
| hide their AI use, you won't be able to prove it anyway.
| songodongo wrote:
| And you can easily prompt your way out of the typical LLM
| style. "Written in the style of Cormac McCarthy's The Road"
| capnrefsmmat wrote:
| No, that doesn't really work so well. A lot of the LLM
| style hallmarks are still present when you ask them to
| write in another style, so a good quantitative linguist
| can find them:
| https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/pyo0xs3k/release/2
|
| That was with GPT4, but my own work with other LLMs show
| they have very distinctive styles even if you
| specifically prompt them with a chunk of human text to
| imitate. I think instruction-tuning with tasks like
| summarization predisposes them to certain grammatical
| structures, so their output is always more information-
| dense and formal than humans.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This still doesn't remove all the slop. You need sampler
| or fine-tuning tricks for it.
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061
| conartist6 wrote:
| Indistinguishable, no. Not these tools.
|
| Without emotion, without love and hate and fear and
| struggle, only a pale imitation of the human voice is or
| will be possible.
| wwfn wrote:
| > passing laws that only apply to people who volunteer to
| follow them
|
| That's a concerning lens to view regulations. Obviously
| true, but for all laws. Regulations don't apply to only to
| what would be immediately observable offenses.
|
| There are lots of bad actors and instances where the law is
| ignored because getting caught isn't likely. Those are
| conspiracies! They get harder to maintain with more people
| involved and the reason for whistle-blower protections.
|
| VW's Dieselgate[1] comes to mind albeit via measurable
| discrepancy. Maybe Enron or WorldCom (via Cynthia Cooper)
| [2] is a better example.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.#Accounting_scandals
| delaminator wrote:
| C2PA-enabled cameras (Sony Alpha range, Leica, and the
| Google Pixel 10) sign the digital images they record.
|
| So legislators, should they so choose, could demand source
| material be recorded on C2PA enabled cameras and produce
| the original recordings on demand.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| > You're essentially passing laws that only apply to people
| who volunteer to follow them . .
|
| Like every law passed forever (not quite but you get the
| picture!) [1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed
| chrisjj wrote:
| > the idea that you can just ban AI from certain settings
| is a fantasy because there's no technical way to actually
| guarantee enforcement.
|
| By that token bans on illegal drugs are fantasy. Whereas in
| fact, enforcement doesn't need to be _guaranteed_ to be
| effective.
|
| There may be little technical means to distinguish at the
| moment. But could that have something to do with lack of
| motivation? Let's see how many "AI" $$$ suddenly become
| available to this once this law provides the incentive.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| > By that token bans on illegal drugs are fantasy.
|
| I think you have this exactly right. They are mostly
| enforced against the poor and political enemies.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Well considering how ineffective the War on Drugs has
| been - is that really a great analogy?
| chrisjj wrote:
| > considering how ineffective the War on Drugs has been
|
| Relative to no war on drugs? Who knows.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Has there ever been a single person who wants an illegal
| drug that couldn't get one because it was illegal?
|
| Just a quick Google search g estimates that less than 3%
| of drugs are intercepted by the government.
| subscribed wrote:
| Me. There are four I want. All very safe.
|
| I always wanted to try specific two, but first cannot be
| had in the safest form because of the specific precursor
| ban, and all of them suffer from an insane (to me) risk
| of adulteration.
|
| In twenty minutes I could probably find 10 "reputable"
| shops/markets, but still with 0 guarantee I won't get the
| specific thing laced with something for strength.
|
| Even if I wanted pot (I don't, I found it repetitive and
| extremely boring, except for one experience), I would
| have to grow it myself (stench!) but then.... where I
| find sane seeds (healthy ratio CBD to THC)?
|
| Similarly, I wouldn't buy the moonshine from someone
| risking prosecution to make and sell it. It's guaranteed
| this risk is offset.
|
| So ... I can't get what I want because there's extremely
| high chance of getting hurt. An example being poisoning
| with pills sold as mdma - every music festival, multiple
| people hurt. Not by Molly, by additives.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I'm absolutely positive that someone in your 1st degree
| or 2nd degree social circle can get you weed if you
| wanted it.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| The idea that you can just ban drinking and driving is a
| fantasy because there's no technical way to actually
| guarantee enforcement.
|
| I know that sounds ridiculous but it kind of illustrates
| the problem with your logic. We don't just write laws that
| are guaranteed to have 100% compliance and/or 100%
| successful enforcement. If that were the case, we'd have
| way fewer laws and little need for courts/a broader
| judicial system.
|
| The goal is getting most AI companies to comply and making
| sure that most of those that don't follow the law face
| sufficient punishment to discourage them (and others).
| Additionally, you use that opportunity to undo what damage
| you can, be it restitution or otherwise for those
| negatively impacted.
| rconti wrote:
| Sure they can be enforced. Your comment seems to be based
| on the idea of detecting AI writing from the output. But
| you can enforce this law based on the way content is
| created. The same way you can enforce food safety laws from
| conditions of the kitchen, not the taste of the food. Child
| labor laws can be enforced. And so on.
|
| Unless you're trying to tell me that writers won't report
| on their business that's trying to replace them with AI.
| Galanwe wrote:
| How about a pop-up on websites, next to the tracking cookie
| ones, to consent reading AI generated text?
|
| I see a bright future for the internet
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Don't give the EU any ideas
| sumeno wrote:
| Who are the honest players generating AI slop articles
| chrisjj wrote:
| The ones honestly labelling their articles e.g. "AI can
| make mistakes". Full marks to Google web search for leading
| the way!
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >But I actually believe they'll be. In the worst way
| possible: honest players will be punished disproportionally.
|
| As with everything else BigCo with their legal team will
| explain to the enforcers why their "right up to the line if
| not over it" solution is compliant and mediumco and smallco
| will be the ones getting fined or being forced to waste money
| staying far from the line or paying a 3rd party to do what
| bigco's legal team does at cost.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Or it'll end up like California cancer warnings: every news
| site will put the warning on, just in case, making it
| worthless.
| Wistar wrote:
| ... or the sesame seed labeling law that resulted in sesame
| seeds being added to everything.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-
| label-b28f8eb3dc...
| nemo wrote:
| As someone who is allergic to sesame, that is insanely
| annoying.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Wow, it's always amazing to me how the law of unintended
| consequences (with capitalistic incentives acting as the
| Monkey's Paw) strikes everytime some well-intended new
| law gets passed.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| There just can't be a way to discriminate on the spectrum
| from "we use AI to tidy up the spelling and grammar" to "we
| just asked ChatGPT to write a story on x", so the
| disclaimer will make it look like everyone just asked
| ChatGPT.
| slg wrote:
| >There just can't be a way to discriminate on the
| spectrum from "we use AI to tidy up the spelling and
| grammar" to "we just asked ChatGPT to write a story on x"
|
| Why though? Did the AI play the role of an editor or did
| it play the role of a reporter seems like a clear
| distinction to me and likely anyone else familiar enough
| with how journalism works.
| vablings wrote:
| Known by the state of cancer to cause California. I do
| think P65 warnings are pretty useful for the most part
| jokes aside
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Essentially useless if everyone slaps on that label.
| Kinda like hospital alarm fatigue.
|
| But this just my uninformed opinion, perhaps those that
| work in the health industry think differently.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Maybe it's not a fair comparison, but I think it's been
| shown that tobacco warnings are effective even though
| they're so common to be "fatigued".
| DrinkingRedStar wrote:
| I do believe this is an unfair comparison. With tobacco
| the warnings are always true, but with prop 65 the
| product might not contain any cancer causing ingredients,
| but the warning is there just in case.
|
| It's much easier to tell yourself prop 65 doesn't have to
| be avoided because "it's probably just there to cover
| their asses" wile tobacco products have real warnings
| that definitely mean danger (though there are people who
| convince themselves otherwise_
| _blk wrote:
| Yup. Or like "necessary cookies" that aren't all that
| necessary when it works just fine without.
| subscribed wrote:
| Well, they're necessary if you're spying on your
| visitors.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Just because you doing notice that it is not working
| properly, that doesn't mean you haven't broken anything.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| I just came across this for the first time. I ordered a
| precision screw driver kit and it came with a cancer
| warning on it. I was really taken aback and then learned
| about this.
| mrandish wrote:
| Some legislation which _sounds good_ in concept and is
| well-intended ends up being having little to no positive
| impact in practice. But it still leaves businesses with
| ongoing compliance costs /risks, taxpayers footing the
| bill for an enforcement bureaucracy forever and consumers
| with either annoying warning interruptions or yet more
| 'warning message noise'.
|
| It's odd that legislators seem largely incapable of
| learning from the rich history of past legislative
| mistakes. Regulation needs to be narrowly targeted,
| clearly defined and have someone smart actually think
| through how the real-world will implement complying as
| well as identifying likely unintended consequences and
| perverse incentives. Another net improvement would be for
| any new regs passed to have an automatic sunset provision
| where they need to be renewed a few years later under a
| process which makes it easy to revise or relax certain
| provisions.
| tedggh wrote:
| Probably worse than that. I can totally see it being
| weaponized. A media company critic o a particular group or
| individual being scrutinized and fined. I haven't looked at
| any of these laws, but I bet their language gives plenty of
| room for interpretation and enforcement, perhaps even if you
| are not generating any content with AI.
| mmooss wrote:
| The primary obstacle is discussions like this one. It will be
| enforced if people insist it's enforced - the power comes
| from the voters. If a large portion of the population -
| especially the informed population, represented to some
| extent here on HN - thinks it's hopeless then it will be. If
| they believe they will get together to make it succeed, it
| will. It's that simple: Whatever people believe is the number
| one determination of outcome. Why do you think so many invest
| so much in manipulating public opinion?
|
| Many people here love SV hackers who have done the
| impossible, like Musk. Could you imagine this conversation at
| an early SpaceX planning meeting? That was a much harder
| task, requiring inventing new technology and enormous sums of
| money.
|
| Lots of regulations are enforced and effective. Your food,
| drugs, highways, airplane flights, etc. are all pretty safe.
| Voters compelling their representatives is commonplace.
|
| It's right out of psyops to get people to despair - look at
| messages used by militaries targeted at opposing troops. If
| those opposing this bill created propaganda, it would look
| like the comments in this thread.
| totetsu wrote:
| Ai view from Simmons+simmons is a very good newsletter on the
| topic of ai regulation https://www.simmons-
| simmons.com/en/publications/clptn86e8002...
| Balinares wrote:
| Don't ding the amusingly scoped animosity, it's very
| convenient: we get to say stuff like "Sure, our laws may keep
| us at the mercy of big corps unlike these other people, BUT..."
| and have a ready rationalization for why our side is actually
| still superior when you look at it. Imagine what would happen
| if the populace figured it's getting collectively shafted in a
| way others may not.
| rubyfan wrote:
| > _Imagine what would happen if the populace figured it 's
| getting collectively shafted in a way others may not._
|
| They already believe that and it's used to keep us fighting
| each other.
| venkat223 wrote:
| All video and other contests should have ai stamp as most of
| the YouTube is AI generated.Almost like memes
| mbreese wrote:
| None of those bills/laws involve legislating publishing though.
| This bill would require a disclaimer on something published.
| That's a freedom of speech issue, so it going to be tougher to
| enforce and keep from getting overturned in the courts. The
| question here are what are the limits the government can have
| on what a company publishes, regardless of how the content is
| generated.
|
| IMO, It's a much tougher problem (legally) than protecting
| actors from AI infringement on their likeness. AI services are
| easier to regulate.. published AI generated content, much more
| difficult.
|
| The article also mentions efforts by news unions of guilds.
| This might be a more effective mechanism. If a
| person/union/guild required members to add a tagline in their
| content/articles, this would have a similar effect - showing
| what is and what is not AI content without restricting speech.
| tempodox wrote:
| > This bill would require a disclaimer on something
| published. That's a freedom of speech issue
|
| They can publish all they want, they just have to label it
| clearly. I don't see how that is a free speech issue.
| mothballed wrote:
| Because compelled speech is an insult to free speech just
| as censored speech is.
| fwip wrote:
| How do you feel about the fact that manufacturers need to
| list the ingredients of the food they sell you?
| mothballed wrote:
| Not thrilled about it, and I personally would rather see
| them repealed. I will concede compelled speech
| impositions have been interpreted more generously when
| they are commercial. I don't necessarily agree with it,
| but even if we concede they can happen, I hope that
| distinction is made for commercial vs non-commercial
| content. Though I'm not thrilled with it happening for
| either.
| HanShotFirst wrote:
| Is AI-generated text speech?
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| It is when a human publishes it. Which is why they're also
| liable for it.
| _blk wrote:
| I agree in general and that should be the position but
| it's probably more nuanced than this in practice: who
| published it when it's a dev that writes a script that
| just spits junk into the wild or reinforces someone
| else's troll-speech?
| mbreese wrote:
| In general, I think LLM content has been found to not be
| copyrightable, but it would still speech when it's
| published. It would be the speech of the company
| publishing it, not the dev that wrote the script. So, ai-
| junk-news.com is still publishing _some_ kind of speech,
| even if it was an LLM that wrote it. At least, that would
| be my interpretataion.
| tencentshill wrote:
| I'll bet AI is going to be simply outlawed for hiring, and
| possibly algorithmic hiring practices altogether. You can't
| audit a non-deterministic system unless you train the AI from
| scratch, which is an expense only the wealthiest companies can
| take on.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| I honestly just don't see any point in these laws because
| they're all predicated on the people who own the AI's acting in
| good faith. In a way I actually think they're a net negative
| because they seem to be giving a false impression that these
| problems have an obvious solution.
|
| One of the most persistent and also the dumbest opinion I keep
| seeing both among laymen and people who really ought to know
| better is that we can solve the deepfake problem by mandating
| digital watermarks on generated content.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| You might as well place it next to the (c) 2026, on the bottom
| every page.
| nh43215rgb wrote:
| Federal level would be the best, but this is a start.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| LOL! As if human-generated news content is any more honest or
| accurate...
| cmiles8 wrote:
| This is a good idea. Although most AI written content is also
| stroll pretty obvious. It consistently has a certain feel that
| just seems off.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| Maybe for articles... and people who seem to think copy pasting
| a basic gpt response to generate a linkedin lunatic style post
| is passing anyone familiar with AI generated responses sniff
| tests...
|
| But i wouldn't be surprised to see a massive % of comments that
| I don't instantly attribute to AI, actually being AI. RP
| prompts are just so powerful, and even my local mediocore model
| coulda wrote 100 comments in the time its taking me to write
| this one.
|
| all humans are pattern seeking to a fault, the amount of people
| even in this community that will not consider something AI
| generated just because it doesnt have emdashes or emojis is
| probably pretty high.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Although most AI written content is also stroll pretty
| obvious. It consistently has a certain feel that just seems
| off.
|
| I think you're saying "AI" written content having a certain
| feel that just seems off is obviously "AI" written content.
|
| Yes. But you've know way of knowing that's _most_. There could
| be 10x more that we don 't detect.
| delichon wrote:
| > In addition, the bill contains language that requires news
| organizations to create safeguards that protect confidential
| material -- mainly, information about sources -- from being
| accessed by AI technologies.
|
| So clawdbot may become a legal risk in New York, even if it
| doesn't generate copy.
|
| And you can't use AI to help evaluate which data AI is forbidden
| to see, so you can't use AI over unknown content. This little
| side-proposal could drastically limit the scope of AI usefulness
| over all, especially as the idea of data forbidden to AI tech
| expands to other confidential material.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| This seems like common sense. I'm running OpenClaw with
| GLM-4.6V as an experiment. I'm allowing my friends to talk to
| it using WhatsApp.
|
| Even though it has been instructed to maintain privacy between
| people who talk to it, it constantly divulges information from
| private chats, gets confused about who is talking to it, and so
| on.^ Of course, a stronger model would be less likely to screw
| up, but this is an intrinsic issue with LLMs that can't be
| fully solved.
|
| Reporters absolutely should not run an instance of OpenClaw and
| provide it with information about sources.
|
| ^: Just to be clear, the people talking to it understand that
| they cannot divulge any actual private information to it.
| seydor wrote:
| That's the equivalent of having a disclaimer "This article was
| written using MS Word". Utterly useless in this day and age
| rektlessness wrote:
| Broad, ambiguous language like 'substantially composed by AI'
| will trigger overcompliance rendering disclosures meaningless,
| but maybe that was the plan.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I can see this ending up like prop65 warnings. Every website will
| have in the footer "this website may contain content known to the
| state of New York to be AI generated"
| Ir0nMan wrote:
| Let's make this a thing if the law passes.
| bluebxrry wrote:
| How about instead of calling Claude a clanker again, which he
| can't control, how about we give everyone a fair shot this time
| with a bill that requires the news to not suck in the first
| place.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| What happens if I use linear regression on a chart? Where does
| one draw the line on "AI"?
| cardanome wrote:
| Obviously people mean LLMs these days when talking about AI.
| Don't be obtuse.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Why limit this to news? Equally deserving of protection is e.g.
| opinion.
| NietTim wrote:
| New York also wants 3d printers to know when they are printing
| gun parts. Sure these initiatives have good meanings but also
| would only work when "the good ones" chose to label their content
| as AI generated/gun parts. There will _never_ be a 100% sure
| fire, non invasive, way to know if an article was (in part) AI
| generated or not, the same way that "2d printers" (lol) refuse to
| photo copy fiat currency, to circle back to the 3d printer
| argument.
|
| IMO: it's already too late and effort should instead be focussed
| on recognition of this and quickly moving on to prevention
| through education instead of trying to smother it with
| legislation, it is just not going away.
| kgwxd wrote:
| AI Generated or News? You can't have both.
| dweekly wrote:
| I've begun an AI content disclosure working group at W3C if folks
| are interested in helping to craft a standard that allows
| websites to voluntarily disclose the degree to which AI was
| involved in creating all or part of the page. That would enable
| publishers to be compliant with this law as well as the EU AI
| Act's Article 50.
|
| https://www.w3.org/community/ai-content-disclosure/
|
| https://github.com/dweekly/ai-content-disclosure
| staticautomatic wrote:
| How does one get involved?
| dweekly wrote:
| Yay, I'd love to have your help!
|
| 1) Anyone can join the W3C group; you don't need to be a
| formal member of W3C!
|
| 2) What's dumb about the proposal itself? How could it better
| achieve its goals?
|
| 3) You can see some dialogue at
| https://github.com/WICG/proposals/issues/261 - what resonates
| and doesn't in the feedback and critique?
| jfengel wrote:
| What I'd really like to see is a label on _original_ reporting.
|
| Even beyond AI, the vast majority of news is re-packaging
| information you got from somewhere else. AI can replace the re-
| writers, but not the original journalists, people who spoke to
| primary sources (or who were themselves eyewitnesses).
|
| Any factual document should reference its sources. If not, it
| should be treated skeptically, regardless of whether AI or a
| human is doing that.
|
| An article isn't automatically valueless just because it's
| synthesized. It can focus and contextualize, regardless of
| whether it's human or AI written. But it should at the very least
| be able to say "This is the actual fact of the matter", with a
| link to it. (And if AI has hallucinated the link, that's a huge
| red flag.)
| stahorn wrote:
| Just like we want to know where the food we eat comes from, we
| want to know where the information comes from. Of course
| there's the limit of journalists having to keep their sources
| secret in many cases. But original publisher I think should be
| possible.
| foxbarrington wrote:
| A common reaction I get to https://forty.news is that the
| stories "need sources" which I always find funny. I don't hear
| the same demand of sources from every other news outlet (I find
| it extra weird because all FN's stories are 40 years old,
| simple to verify, and can't push an agenda the same way).
|
| Totally agree with you: all newspapers should cite sources.
| What's silly to me is how selectively people care--big outlets
| get to hand-wave the "trust me" part even when a piece is
| basically a lightly rewritten press release, thinly sourced, or
| reflecting someone's incentives more than reality.
| Spivak wrote:
| Well yeah because investigative journalism and original
| reporting outside of the spectacle of buying a plane ticket
| to a warzone or weather disaster to the reporter can have a
| dramatic background is too expensive when people come to you
| in droves with literally pre-written articles you can rubber
| stamp and publish.
|
| Which by the way if you ever want to get in the paper that's
| how, it's super easy. AI will help you learn how to write in
| the right tone/voice for news if you don't know how.
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| > all newspapers should cite sources.
|
| You'd lose a lot of valid sourcing if you made this a
| requirement. For example, the Catholic Church scandal
| investigation would never have seen the light of day if the
| key legal sources corroborating the story had to give up
| their identity as part of the process. Speaking off the
| record is often where a lot of those kinds of stories come
| together.
|
| And the reaction around the world to that story, the
| thousands of victims that came forward, resoundingly
| confirmed what people were saying on background.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There's already such a label: "exclusive!"
| ntnsndr wrote:
| For example, the Colorado Sun has labels on every story for the
| nature of reporting that went into it: https://coloradosun.com/
|
| Some may find it surprising that this is left over from the
| Sun's early support from the crypto journalism project Civil.
| talkingtab wrote:
| I'm beginning to suspect HN also needs such a bill. Maybe it is
| not AI content, but so many prominent posts on HN feel like
| advertising. Perhaps that is the good thing about AI is that it
| decreases the trust level. Or is that really a good thing?
|
| [Edit: spelling sigh]
| ameliaquining wrote:
| I'm not convinced that this law, if it passed, would survive a
| court challenge on First Amendment grounds. U.S. constitutional
| law generally doesn't look kindly on attempts to regulate
| journalism.
| saghm wrote:
| OTOH any challenge that makes it all the way to the Supreme
| Court right now has as much chance of being a decision that
| completely ignores constitutional law as it does being decided
| based on that.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| This is so dumb. Name literally any problem caused by AI
| generated content (there are dozens to choose from) and I will
| explain why this law will make absolutely no impact on that
| issue.
|
| Now articles from organizations with legitimate journalists and
| fact checkers like the NYT, WSJ, or the economist will need an
| "AI generated" badge because they used an AI assistant and they
| have risk adverse legal departments. This will be gleefully
| pointed out by every brain dead Twitter conspiracy theorist,
| Breitbart columnist, 911 truther substack writer, and Russian
| spam bot as they happily spew unbadged drivel out into the world.
| Thanks so much New York!
|
| AI doesn't make bad news content. Complete disregard for
| objective reality does. I'll take an ai assisted human that
| actually cares about truth over an unassisted partisan hooligan
| every time.
|
| If this is the best our legislatures can come up with we are so
| utterly fucked...
| kaicianflone wrote:
| This feels like a symptom of a deeper issue: we're treating AI
| outputs as if they're authoritative when they're really just
| single, unaccountable generations. Disclaimers help, but they
| don't fix the decision process that produced the content in the
| first place.
|
| One approach we've been exploring is turning high-stakes AI
| outputs (like news summaries or classifications) into consensus
| jobs: multiple independent agents submit or vote under explicit
| policies, with incentives and accountability, and the system
| resolves the result before anything is published. The goal isn't
| "AI is right," but "this outcome was reached under clear rules
| and can be audited."
|
| That kind of structure seems more scalable than adding
| disclaimers after the fact. We're experimenting with this idea on
| an open source CLI at https://consensus.tools if anyone's
| interested in the underlying mechanics.
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment of this, but it makes one major
| assumption that I don't think will pass muster in the long run:
| that people generating output care enough themselves to do it
| "the right way". Many don't and never will.
|
| Low-effort content mills will never, ever care enough to
| generate more accurate, consensus-based output, especially if
| it adds complexity and cost to their workflows.
|
| > That kind of structure seems more scalable than adding
| disclaimers after the fact.
|
| Not if your goal as a business is to churn out slop as fast and
| cheaply as possible, and a whole lot of online content is like
| that. A disclaimer is warranted because you cannot force
| everyone to use the kinds of approaches that you're talking
| about. A ton of people who either don't know or don't care what
| they're putting out will inevitably exist.
| ericzawo wrote:
| Good.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Any news content created using generative AI must also be
| reviewed by a human employee "with editorial control" before
| publication._
|
| To emphasize this: it's important that the organization assume
| responsibility, just as they would with traditional human-
| generated 'content'.
|
| What we don't want is for these disclaimers to be used like the
| disclaimers of tech companies deploying AI: to try to weasel out
| of responsibility.
|
| "Oh no, it's 'AI', who could have ever foreseen the possibility
| that it would make stuff up, and lie about it confidently, with
| terrible effects. Aw, shucks: AI, what can ya do. We only
| designed and deployed this system, and are totally innocent of
| any behavior of the system."
|
| Also don't turn this into a compliance theatre game, like we have
| with information security.
|
| "We paid for these compliance products, and got our
| certifications, and have our processes, so who ever could have
| thought we'd be compromised."
|
| (Other than anyone who knows anything about these systems, and
| knows that the stacks and implementation and processes are mostly
| a load of performative poo, chosen by people who really don't
| care about security.)
|
| Hold the news orgs responsible for 'AI' use. The first time a
| news report wrongly defames someone, or gets someone killed, a
| good lawsuit should wipe out all their savings on staffing.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| We don't hold the president of the US responsible for spreading
| AI video and photos as real. Let's start there and work our way
| down
| hashstring wrote:
| I, and I believe many others, do hold him responsible for it.
|
| However, I do not think starting there is a good idea: your
| progress in other areas would stall until that crook has been
| dealt with.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Like I've said a few times on HN, if you have 10 friends
| and ask them what they want to eat for dinner and 6 say
| "let's go to a Mexican restaurants" and the other four say
| "let's kill Bob and eat him", it still tells you a lot
| about your friend group. It tells you even more of the
| person advocating eating Bob is made the leader of your
| group and decides where you are going to eat dinner for the
| next four years.
|
| Especially after you have already seen what your friend has
| already done for four years
| hashstring wrote:
| Ok, but how does that relate to what I stated exactly?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Because it doesn't matter if you or even 60% of the
| population doesn't approve of what Trump is doing -
| including posting a racist meme showing the Obamas as
| apes yesterday - this tells you about the country we live
| in
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I support this for the same reason I want scripted reality TV
| shows to be labeled as such. Anything that claims to be reality
| but isn't should be clearly marked as such, unless it's obvious
| from the context.
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