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The Wall Street Journal said that billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller did not violate its policies by using artificial intelligence to write an op-ed published Monday that criticized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's interventions in the U.S. bond market.
Paul Gigot, the Journal's editorial page editor, said in a statement Tuesday that AI is a "fact of modern life" that people will use to assist their writing, research, grammar and editing.
"The question for us is whether what we publish from contributors reflects an author's original argument, and if the author has the standing and credibility to make it," he said. "In Stan Druckenmiller's case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion."
The Journal did not disclose to readers any use of AI in the op-ed when it was first published or add any after Druckenmiller confirmed he got technological help producing it. The Wall Street Journal's newsroom abides by a different set of standards from its editorial page, a company spokeswoman said.
Druckenmiller is the former chairman and president of hedge fund Duquesne Capital. The Journal and other news outlets have referred to him as a "mentor" to Bessent.
Accusations that Druckenmiller had used AI to write the column flared not long after its publication. Social media posts claimed it used wording that contained giveaway tics of AI-generated prose and shared results from passing the op-ed through AI detector apps.
When NOTUS, a Washington-based news outlet, asked Druckenmiller whether he used AI to write the column, the billionaire responded that he did.
"There's a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major," he told the publication. "I'm not embarrassed by it … I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems."
Druckenmiller did not respond to a request for further comment from The Washington Post.
A page on the Journal's website says that its newsroom uses generative AI in several ways: data-driven investigations, summarizing articles and translating stories into different languages. The Journal's parent company, News Corp, also has a content partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and the Journal uses a Google AI product called Vertex AI.
"In all instances, we adhere to our long-held values of accuracy, accountability, originality, quality, transparency and respect for intellectual property," the site says. "Work that includes AI inputs is reviewed by a journalist before publishing."
The news industry has had to reckon with the rise of generative AI, which in recent years has been changing how people find information and how they write.
News Corp is suing the AI search engine company Perplexity alleging copyright infringement. The Post has partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity.
The backlash to AI-generated writing has reached scientific journals, literary magazines, publishing houses and global music charts, where tastemakers and deciders are weighing the value of creativity that's entirely born from and executed by humans.
Standards for how media organizations handle the use of AI internally are inconsistent between publications - and sometimes, as the Journal incident demonstrates, within one publication. Opinion sections, which rely heavily on outside contributors who often are not professional writers, may face a greater burden of AI-written or enhanced submissions.
The Druckenmiller disclosure reignited debate over whether a financial guru needs to publish words that he came up with himself.
Tech investor Jason Calacanis wrote in a post on X that it is "unforgivable" that a public figure wrote an AI-generated piece without clear disclosure "in the first sentence" for readers. "If you can't be bothered to take the time to write your own opinion piece, that should tell you it's not worth publishing," he added.
Joe Weisenthal, who co-hosts the popular Bloomberg podcast "Odd Lots," wrote on X that the quality of the writing is what's most important - not whether it's AI-generated or not.
"Prior to AI, there were plenty of high-profile people publishing op-eds under their own name that were entirely written by some underling, and I don't think there was much controversy over it," he said. "IMO, long-term the only sustainable question is: is the writing good or bad?"
Alex Mahadevan, who runs the Poynter Institute's media literacy project, MediaWise, told The Post in an email that the Journal is right that AI is a part of life right now. "But using it to write an entire piece - opinion or not - in a major news outlet runs afoul of the norms and ethics of AI use now, as well," he said.
At the very least, he said, the Journal should have disclosed the use of AI because audiences want to know whether they're looking at human writing or something "straight out of a chatbot."
Mahadevan also took issue with the quality of the piece.
"It's not great writing," he said. "So if the tool is really helping someone better express themselves through writing, it ain't working."
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