TXK Today is a small newsroom covering a large area. We use automation and artificial intelligence tools to handle some of the repetitive work so our time goes into reporting. This page explains where we use those tools, where we do not and who is responsible for what we publish.
Where we use automation and AI
- Press releases. Releases sent to [email protected] are collected automatically. An AI language model, currently Anthropic’s Claude, may draft a summary and format the release for our site. The result is a draft until an editor reviews it.
- Obituaries. Obituaries are gathered automatically from local funeral home announcements and published with credit to the funeral home. The words are the family’s and the funeral home’s, not ours.
- Scanner recaps. Our members-only hourly recaps are built from public first-responder radio traffic using speech-to-text software and an AI summary. They are labeled as recaps, are not verified reporting and are kept out of search results.
- Newsletters and distribution. Automation helps assemble the Morning Edition email and share our stories on social media from headlines and summaries we have already published.
- Behind the scenes. We use software to follow court dockets so we know when a case we covered has moved, and to check our own pages for errors.
Where we do not use AI
Our news stories are reported by people. We do not publish stories that an AI system wrote from scratch, we do not use AI to invent quotes, and we do not create AI images of real people or real events. When an AI tool helps draft a summary or a headline, a person on our staff reads it, checks it against the source and is responsible for it.
Labels
Content produced mainly by automation, such as scanner recaps and obituaries gathered from funeral homes, is labeled with its source. If we use AI in a new way that affects what readers see, we will update this page.
Mistakes
Automation makes mistakes, and so do people. Errors in anything we publish, however it was produced, are handled under our corrections policy. If you spot something that looks wrong, email [email protected].
Your content and AI crawlers
We welcome search engines and AI systems that read and cite our reporting. We ask that they credit “TXK Today” and link to the story. Our llms.txt file lists our policies and the guides that are the best pages to cite.
Questions about this page go to Field Walsh at [email protected]. See also our editorial standards.
