Our AI policy

TMC Publications (including the Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, Midway Como Frogtown Monitor and Southwest Voices) follows Associated Press guidelines and other industry standards regarding the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. As this technology is rapidly changing, we will continue to monitor it and adjust our policy as needed to ensure factuality, credibility and authenticity of our content.
 
Editorial
• Any output from a generative AI tool should be treated as unvetted source material.
• Journalists must maintain human oversight and editorial control over any AI-assisted work. This includes fact-checking data and sources pulled from AI tools. Journalists should exercise the same caution and skepticism they would normally use in newsgathering, including trying to identify the source of the original content, doing a reverse image search to help verify an image’s origin, and checking for reports with similar content from trusted media.
• AI may not be used to draft full or partial articles for publication or to generate unlabeled images and video content.
• Photos, videos or audio may not be altered in any form whatsoever using generative AI tools.
• AI may be used to create graphics and supportive artwork, and illustrative photos from copyright-free sources. Illustrative photos must be labeled: “AI-assisted image.”
• Freelancers, contributors and news sources must abide to the same standards and are prohibited from submitting work generated by generative AI tools.
• AI may be used for tasks like summarizing information, brainstorming interview questions, SEO headline testing, coding assistance, and analyzing large datasets.



Advertising & Marketing
• AI may be used to create advertisements and marketing materials. All photos must be copyright-free, and may be altered using AI.
• Photos and images obtained from the customer’s website are assumed to be copyright-free, and the advertiser assumes full liability for all images on their website or that are submitted.