Suncoast Searchlight adopts AI policy, forms AI committee

Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom serving Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties, announces its adoption of a policy governing the use of artificial intelligence — a living document that will evolve as technology advances and journalistic best practices are refined.

The policy, which goes into effect immediately, was created by Searchlight staff with guidance from board member Kelly McBride, senior vice president of the Poynter Institute and a nationally recognized leader on ethics and accountability in journalism. It addresses how AI tools may be used, how human accountability is maintained and how disclosures should be handled. 

The fully policy is here.

Artificial intelligence has created new opportunities across many industries as companies work to integrate it into their operations. It also has raised questions about ethics, accountability and transparency. The news industry is no exception.

For Suncoast Searchlight, a newsroom launched in February and still in its first year of operation, those questions surfaced recently among staff and made clear the need for shared expectations around how those tools should — and should not — be used.

The policy, which used Poynter’s AI ethics starter kit for newsrooms as a framework, cites five core principals guiding the organization’s use of AI: transparency; accuracy and human oversight; privacy and security; accountability; and exploration. Taken together, they lay the groundwork for an environment in which staff is encouraged to take advantage of this emerging technology to serve our mission in a responsible, ethical and transparent manner. 

To that end, the policy provides clear guidance on permissible use of AI tools — including large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and NotebookLM — for tasks like research, source-finding, code assistance, copy editing and document summarization, while prohibiting the entry of newsroom content that could be used to train those models. 

The policy also prohibits uploading private or proprietary information into AI tools, using those tools for wholesale writing or rewriting of content or publishing anything suggested or created by AI without human verification.

When AI has been used in a significant way to help produce journalism, the policy requires public disclosure through a number of avenues, including an editor’s note at the bottom of an article or, for something more substantial, a separate “how-we-did-it” story. 

As part of this work, Suncoast Searchlight formed an AI committee composed of three journalists. The committee will meet regularly to review staff’s use of approved tools, evaluate requests to use new tools, monitor news about the broader industry’s use of AI and seek input from newsroom and community stakeholders. 

The adoption of this policy marks the beginning of our efforts to integrate these tools more consistently into our workflow while maintaining our core values and principals. We will update the policy as those efforts dictate and look forward to continuing this work in a thoughtful, responsible and transparent way.