Slug: la-times-patrick-soon-shiong-ai-kkk
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire president of the Los Angeles Times, has removed the newspaper’s AI tool from its articles for defending the KKK, less than a week after it was launched.
The LA Times announced the launch of the AI tool, called Insights, on March 3, which was designed to accompany articles that are “written from a personal perspective”, such as opinion pieces, review, and commentary. Soon-Shiong said that Insights would be a “instantly accessible way to see a wide range of different AI-enabled perspectives alongside the positions presented in the article”.
According to the LA Times, Insights‘ goal is to analyze articles “to identify where the views expressed may fall on the political spectrum. It also offers an annotated summary of the ideas expressed in the piece along with different views on the topic from a variety of sources.”
Despite this, Insights already was the subject of controversy only a day after its release.
As mentioned by The Guardian, in response to a LA Times opinion peace published on March 1 that warned of the dangers of unregulated AI use in historical documentaries, Insights said the article “generally aligns with a Center Left point of view”, with the AI tool arguing that AI “democratizes historical storytelling”.
On March 4, New York Times writer Ryan Marc took to Bluesky to highlight an Insights note on a LA Times article about the 100th anniversary of Anaheim removing KKK members from its city council.
The AI-generate note stated that “Local historical accounts occasionally frame the 1920s Klan as a product of ‘white Protestant culture’ responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement, minimizing its ideological threat.”, downplaying the KKK’s racist history and ideology.
“Earlier today the LA Times had AI-generated counterpoints to a column from @gustavoarellano.bsky.social. His piece argued that Anaheim, the city he grew up in, should not forget its KKK past.”, said Marc. “The AI “well, actually”-ed the KKK.”
As mentioned by The Guardian, the Insight feature has since been removed from the article.
The article’s author, columnist Gustavo Arellano, responded to the Insight note on Twitter, saying “Um, AI actually got that right. OCers have minimized the 1920s Klan as basically anti-racists since it happened. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a guy who’s been covering this for a quarter century.”
In an interview with CNN, Soon-Shiong claimed that he hadn’t seen Arellano’s article nor the AI-generated response, but said that the removal was a “learning opportunity”, and shows that Insight has “operational checks and balances”. “(The incident is) a good lesson to show that at least artificial intelligence is not fully there yet (…) it’s in an attempt to understand that,”, said Soon-Shiong.
Soon-Shiong further defended Insights by reaffirming it’s indented purpose of bridging the political gap. “It’s actually trying to say, ‘OK, this is what this piece is trying to say with (…) all the references from,”, he added. “And then, if you don’t agree with what this piece is saying — because it’s a voice, it’s not news — this is the opportunity for us to share with you an alternative view that somebody else would look at tied to its references.”
In email statement sent to SFGate, LA Times Guild vice chair Matt Hamilton, stated that union leadership will “support efforts to improve media literacy and clearly distinguish our news report from our opinion pages. But we don’t think this approach — AI-generated analysis unvetted by editorial staff — will do much to enhance trust in the media. Quite the contrary, this tool risks further eroding confidence in our journalism. The money for this endeavor could have been directed to supporting our journalists on the ground who have not received a cost-of-living increase since 2021.”
Soon-Shiong previously announced the AI tool back in December, and the launch of Insights comes amidst increased tensions between opinion journalists, the LA Time‘s newsroom, and Soon-Shiong over the future direction of the newspaper.
In the same December, Soon-Shiong allegedly asked the LA Times‘s editorial board to “take a break” from writing about Donald Trump, and had previously prevented the editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. The latter decision was followed by subscriber cancellations and multiple employee and high-ranking resignations.
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