Here’s another way people are still good: I went to a sweaty exercise class today and afterwards every single person thoroughly wiped down their mats. I watched ppl take their time to clean every corner—they didn’t just do a cursory few swipes. A small but kind act in this season of infection.

People are still good. I find that so essential to remember when the news is so bad. Props to @cameronoakes.bsky.social for assigning and editing this perfect Thanksgiving piece, and to Priyanka Bansal for reporting it.

I feel like he gets it tbh

Actually, one last chapter in this rant. I bring you: the infamous byline of "Margaux Blanchard"

It's all so annoying that this is happening, as if media didn't have enough problems already.

End of rant! Now, enjoy this story about humans using AI to improve their lives. It's been fact-checked and thoughtfully edited. The author is a real person and a fantastic writer. It's a great read.

Our newsroom is rapidly developing systems to detect & prevent fake, AI-generated copy. Chatbots are not journalists no matter how pretty their prose! We want real news, written by real experts who've brought deep sourcing & human judgement to the task.

@rewirenewsgroup.com's rigorous fact-checking process has saved us from AI slop on two occasions now, as has @natasharoy.bsky.social 's spidey sense for these things. When she gets a wiggly feeling in her gut, she tells me, and into the AI detector that copy goes.

A big red flag is sources with no online presence; that is unusual in the digital era. But sometimes the AI invents interviews with real people. The only way to know whether the "author" actually interviewed them is to see a transcript and call them up.

I wrote about AI's incursion into news in today's Rewire Weekly newsletter. The fabricated pitch and chatbot-authored reportage turned out to be only the opening salvo of an ongoing battle against AI-generated content. We routinely find AI pitches now, and have identified more AI reporting.